Category Archives: Turkey

How Turkey’s military coup failed

The Associated Press reports: Around 4 p.m. [on Friday afternoon] Turkish national intelligence flagged to the chief of staff that they had intercepted communications among a number of military personnel indicating that a coup was planned. With many of the military’s senior officers attending a wedding and the president vacationing at a seaside resort, and while a military shake-up was imminent, the coup plotters felt it was an opportune time to strike.

A former Turkish military officer, now a security analyst, Metin Gurcan, wrote that the top brass decided to move to avert a coup by closing airspace and forbidding military units from leaving their barracks. Sensing that their moves were detected and getting wind of the meeting of loyal officers, the coup plotters moved up their plans from later that evening. Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s spokesman, said the plotters kidnapped Gen. Hulusi Akar, the chief of military staff, after he learned of the suspicious activities.

Gurcan said the soldiers leading the coup relied on WhatsApp to communicate commands and coordinate moves. Family members of soldiers detained after the coup attempt told reporters the soldiers thought they were being sent to training. [Continue reading…]

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‘We feared the worst’: Turkey’s failed coup a relief for Syrian refugees

The Guardian reports: When tanks rolled across Istanbul and Ankara on Friday night, at the start of Turkey’s botched coup, many in the country were frightened. But few in Turkey had more reason to be afraid than its 2.7 million Syrians, the largest Syrian diaspora community in the world.

“When we first heard about the coup attempt, we felt an unprecedented fear,” remembers Hussein Qassoum, a 30-year-old logistics manager living in Istanbul. “Most of my friends started asking: ‘Which other country should we go to now?’”

Like many Turks, Syrians feared the violence that broke out in the early hours of Saturday might spiral into something more sustained. But Syrians also had more specific concerns about what might happen to them if the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was toppled.

Life is hard for Syrians in Erdoğan’s Turkey, where they do not have full rights. Despite recent legislative changes, the vast majority are not allowed to work. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian children are not in school, with many working in sweatshops instead. Syrians are denied official refugee status, since Turkey does not recognise key parts of the UN refugee convention.

But Erdoğan’s government has at least given about 2.7 million Syrians a basic level of sanctuary. None of his political opponents has promised to be as accommodating and there is a fear that without Erdoğan, life could get even tougher for Syrians in Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish aid flows into besieged Gaza Strip

Al Jazeera reports: The night before Eid, Basem Abu Attia received a call from a local official with some good news: His food package was ready for pick-up.

“I was very surprised,” Abu Attia told Al Jazeera. “I wasn’t expecting anything … I had nothing to give my family, so when the aid came I was overjoyed.”

More aid from Turkey has started flowing into Gaza this week under the terms of the recent Turkey-Israel deal, after the Social Affairs Ministry spent weeks organising the material. Distribution to about 75,000 families dependent on government subsidies began on Tuesday, although delivery was previously expedited to some of the neediest families, including Abu Attia’s.

The aid package included rice, oil, olives, dates and flour – basic items that Abu Attia, who lives in the Nuseirat refugee camp, cannot afford himself. His 10 children, the youngest of whom is three, were elated, he said – “especially with the chocolates”. He hopes that later deliveries will include toys for his children.

Just a week into receiving the package, however, all that remained was a bag of rice and a can of olives.

“We need a long-term programme, and we’re hoping the Turks will help us with this,” said Talla Abu Jomaa, the Social Affairs Ministry representative in Nuseirat camp, who delivered the aid package to Abu Attia.

Uncertainty was cast over the Turkey-Israel deal after a failed coup attempt by members of the Turkish military last week. But as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged in control, Turkish officials confirmed that the agreement remains on course. [Continue reading…]

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Erdogan gathers top security chiefs as detentions, firings reach 60,000 across Turkey

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Bloomberg reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with top security officials for the first time since Friday night’s thwarted coup amid a widening purge of state institutions, and has vowed to make an “important” announcement afterward.

Following a National Security Council meeting in Ankara that began at about 1 p.m., Erdogan will also gather with ruling AK Party government ministers as well as the full cabinet in a series of meetings that could last several hours.

Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told BloombergHT television in an interview Tuesday that measures to be announced will include a “new framework in line with the constitution” for the prosecution of the coup plotters. Erdogan’s chief adviser Cemil Ertem told Anadolu news agency there’s no plan to impose capital controls, and Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Twitter that policy steps taken will be “market friendly.”

The government’s crackdown in reprisal for the coup attempt has been swift and severe. Turkey has detained, suspended, fired or stripped the professional accreditation of around 60,000 people, according to Bloomberg calculations. Erdogan has blamed the foiled military intervention on supporters of U.S.-based religious leader Fethullah Gulen. As that purge extended to the country’s academic institutions on Tuesday evening, the lira weakened to within 1 percent of a record low. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey bans all academics from travel in latest post-coup measure

The Washington Post reports: Turkey issued a blanket travel ban on all academics and opened top-to-bottom investigations into military courts Wednesday as security chiefs planned the next steps in sweeping crackdowns after last week’s failed coup.

Already, the purges and probes have touched tens of thousands of people — judges, civil servants, military, police and others — as Turkey’s leaders seek to root out opponents and perceived internal dissident.

The latest moves underscored the expanding reach of the fallout.

At least 262 military judges and prosecutors were suspended as part of a full-scale investigation by the Defense Ministry into all personnel in its judiciary, the private NTV broadcaster reported without giving additional details.

The travel restrictions on educators, reported the state broadcaster TRT, came after more than 15,000 education workers were suspended and resignations were demanded for all university deans. [Continue reading…]

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Erdogan’s purge of the Gulenists is like ‘the hunt for Trotskyists under Stalin’

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David Gardner writes: The size of the cull suggests the putschists precipitated a showdown they knew was coming anyway, above all at the annual meeting of the Supreme Military Council at the beginning of August. President Erdogan was then expected to purge the army of anyone suspected of supporting Fethullah Gulen, a US-based imam who, though once his ally, has become a bitter rival in an intra-Islamist struggle.

The Gulen network, most visible through its international franchise of schools, had spent decades building up invisible clusters of power in Turkey’s police, judiciary, army and security services.

It was invaluable to Mr Erdogan in defanging the military, by fair means or foul, but once the Kemalist generals were out of the picture the former allies turned on each other with a ferocity that buckled Turkey’s institutions. One erstwhile ruling party supporter likens the witch-hunt against the Gulenists to “the hunt for Trotskyists under Stalin”. [Continue reading…]

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How can the U.S. count on a key NATO ally at war with itself?

Michael Weiss writes: Four days after Turkey’s failed coup, which left 300 dead and more than 1,400 injured, new details have emerged to suggest the putsch came closer to a successful overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan than many observers thought—and the operation could have a major impact on U.S.-Turkish military cooperation in the war against the so-called Islamic State just across Turkey’s borders in Syria and Iraq.

Aaron Stein at the Atlantic Council nails the core problem when he asks, “How can we credibly go to war with a NATO ally in coalition operations when that ally’s army is at war with itself?”

Turkey, remember, has the second biggest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, after the United States. In the Cold War years, its borders with the Soviet Union were vital to Western strategy. In the age of jihad, the fact that its territory abuts not only ISIS-land, but Iran, gives it enormous geopolitical importance.

The putschists, it now appears, relied heavily on a key NATO installation to carry out the aerial component of their daring plot, which was spearheaded by officers in the Turkish air force. And the enormous post-coup dragnet of suspected traitors already has snared high-ranking military officials who had been responsible for securing Turkey’s frontiers and carrying out coalition policy in Syria.

Had the coup not been detected in advance by Turkish intelligence, forcing the conspiracy to be moved up in the calendar, it might well have succeeded.

According to Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkey specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, the head of the National Intelligence Organization, or MIT, Hakan Fidan uncovered “‘unusual activity’ within army ranks on Friday afternoon and [visited] the Chief of Staff around 5 p.m. This led to precautions and an inquiry at the senior level, forcing the coup plot to be executed at an earlier time.” CNNTurk corroborated this story.

A Sikorsky attack helicopter and putschist commandos apparently were mobilized to attack MIT headquarters in Ankara and try to kidnap Fidan.

“I think these guys missed decapitating the government by about 30 minutes and we’d have woken up on Saturday with a dead president, a surrounded parliament, and a chief of general staff in custody,” said Stein, my colleague at the Atlantic Council. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey aren’t safe anymore

Jeffrey Lewis writes: Among the candidates for most iconic image of this past weekend’s attempted coup in Turkey has to be the many videos of Turkish F-16s, hijacked by the mutineers, flying low over Istanbul and Ankara. Eventually, those planes seem to have bombed the parliament. There were rumors that they considered shooting down the plane of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

What’s clear is that mutineers managed to keep the F-16s in the air only because they were able to refuel them mid-flight using at least one tanker aircraft operated out of Incirlik Air Base. Eventually Turkish authorities closed the airspace over Incirlik and cut power to it. The next day, the security forces loyal to the government arrested the Turkish commander at the base. (The images of him being escorted away in handcuffs are in the contest to qualify as the weekend’s most iconic.)

In retrospect, it is understandable why the Turkish government closed the airspace over Incirlik, even if it did temporarily disrupt air operations against the Islamic State in Syria. But that is in retrospect. In the moment, it raised a disquieting thought. There are a few dozen U.S. B61 nuclear gravity bombs stored at Incirlik. Does it seem like a good idea to station American nuclear weapons at an air base commanded by someone who may have just helped bomb his own country’s parliament? [Continue reading…]

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Erdogan’s people and the Syrians

Suzy Hansen writes: In an old part of Istanbul, in a district named Fatih for the Muslim conqueror, tucked inside ancient Byzantine walls in a neighborhood known as Karagumruk, there is a narrow barbershop with pistachio green and glittery countertops called Golden Scissors. When I visited one evening in late June, during Ramadan, every chair was occupied. The religious holiday this year required 17 straight hours of daily abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking or having sex, so just before breaking fast, at the sunset hour, a happy madness set in. Out on the street, women rushed by laden with bags; spaghetti-limbed boys, delirious with hunger and hormones, threw balls against the wall, sometimes at people’s heads. Inside Golden Scissors, men visited for a trim or a cut, given by an excitable man of 40 named Murat, who wore the long, straight beard, full-bodied pants and fez-shaped cap often seen on the devout. He was talking about the events of the previous night when Istanbul’s main airport was bombed.

“We’re very sad,” Murat said. “There’s not much else to feel. The terrorists hit the international terminal. It’s not against us.”

One of the barbershop’s windows, painted with a transliteration of the Quran’s opening words — bismillahirrahmanirrahim, “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate” — looked out on to the neighborhood’s main drag, Professor Naci Sensoy Street. It was like all of Karagumruk’s streets: so narrow and intimate that the pastel-colored apartments, ramshackle buildings and storefronts seemed poised to embrace. Fruit and vegetable stands spilled onto the sidewalk with their piles of strawberries, cucumbers and bananas. Men sat in groups outside on footstools, and everyone walked down the middle of the street, where the weight of a thousand eyes produces a strange feeling of both protection and surveillance. Yet Karagumruk is also known as a rough-and-tumble place of nationalistic attitudes, small-time mafias, jittery drug addicts and gunfire in the night.

Karagumruk lies within the larger district of Fatih, an AK Party stronghold, intensely loyal to its leader and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During the recent coup attempt against Erdogan’s government, after the Ministry of Religious Affairs sent texts to imams to issue a special call to prayer, all of Fatih exploded out onto the wide-laned Vatan Avenue, a couple blocks from Karagumruk. Murat put down his newborn child to join the crowd, which included men of all ages, even little boys. When a helicopter began to hover near the AK Party headquarters in Fatih, 10 minutes from Karagumruk, the protesters rushed it, preventing it from landing. As it pulled away, it fired into the crowd, killing at least one protester and injuring others. When I asked Murat why he and his neighbors took to the streets — for Islam? for Erdogan? — he replied, “Erdogan is Islam, and Islam is Erdogan.” [Continue reading…]

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Iran supports Erdogan in effort to sway Turkey’s approach to Syria

Ali Hashem writes: Within hours after the coup attempt began late July 15, the SNSC [Iran’s Supreme National Security Council] convened to discuss developments in Turkey. Following the meeting, which was chaired by President Hassan Rouhani, Shamkhani publicly condemned the coup attempt, telling local media outlets, “We support Turkey’s legal government and oppose any type of coup — either [initiated] domestically or supported by foreign sides.” Shamkhani said, “What determined the fate of developments in Turkey were the will and presence of the [Turkish] nation and the vigilance of political parties, whose contribution thwarted this coup. Shamkhani concluded, “Our stance is not exclusive to Turkey either. We have pursued the same stance in Syria too. Our position toward all regional countries is that we always prefer people’s votes [to decide governments] rather than tribal, sectarian and hereditary governments, and this means democracy.”

“A coup in Turkey isn’t something Iran can tolerate,” another Iranian politician told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It’s true that there are differences over Syria, and sometimes in Iraq. Yet the fact is that there is no direct problem between Iran and Turkey; on the contrary, [bilateral] relations are always advancing for the better. Besides, Iran is opposed to any kind of change by force, and especially when the government [in question] is democratically elected.” The Iranian politician added, “The most important thing is that this experience [the coup attempt] might be an opportunity for Mr. Erdogan to understand the situation in neighboring Syria.”

Indeed, multiple Iranian officials, including Ali Akbar Velayati — foreign policy adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — brought up Syria in their condemnation of the coup attempt in Turkey. While condemning the coup, Velayati — a former foreign minister — said he hopes “the Turkish government will respect the views and votes of the Syrian people and allow them to decide their own government.” It was a clear message from Iran to Turkey regarding Syria and the future of the struggle in the region. For five years now, Iranian officials have on repeated occasions stated that they have been trying to engage the Turks on a path to address the situation in Syria, and while unsuccessful, have never given up on this approach. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey sends U.S. evidence of coup plot

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration’s receipt on Tuesday of a cache of documents from Turkey as part of Ankara’s demand for the extradition of a U.S.-based cleric resident it blames for instigating last week’s failed coup formally kick-starts a lengthy process that holds far-reaching implications for the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State and for relations between two key allies.

Turkish officials said the material, sent by email, contains evidence that would prove Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania for nearly two decades, was behind the attempted coup.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters that government evidence shows that “a clique” of Mr. Gulen’s followers serving in the Turkish army carried out the failed coup.

In response, Mr. Gulen called Turkey’s extradition demand “ridiculous, irresponsible and false” and said he had nothing to do with the “horrific” failed coup.

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today once again demonstrated he will go to any length necessary to solidify his power and persecute his critics,” Mr. Gulen said. “I urge the U.S. government to reject any effort to abuse the extradition process to carry out political vendettas.”

The White House said the Justice Department had begun to review the documents as part of a process that ultimately would require U.S. federal court action for approval of an extradition, while distancing President Barack Obama from the final decision. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish government expands massive purge of opponents following coup attempt

The Associated Press reports: The Turkish government on Tuesday escalated its wide-ranging crackdown against people it claims have ties to the alleged coup plotters, firing nearly 24,000 teachers and Interior Ministry employees across the country and demanding the resignations of another 1,577 university deans.

The dismissals touched every aspect of government life.

Turkish media, in rapid-fire reports, said the Ministry of Education fired 15,200 people across the country, the Interior Ministry fired 8,777 employees and Turkey’s Board of Higher Education requested the deans’ resignations. In addition, 257 people working at the office of the prime minister were dismissed and the Directorate of Religious Affairs announced it had sacked 492 staff including clerics, preachers and religious teachers.

Tuesday’s firings come on top of the roughly 9,000 people who have been detained by the government, including security personnel, judges, prosecutors, religious figures and others. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency says courts have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial over their roles in the coup attempt. Dozens of others were still being questioned. [Continue reading…]

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‘What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?’ asked one of Erdoğan’s ministers

The Guardian recounts the events during the coup attempt in Turkey: President Erdoğan himself was at the resort of Marmaris, but had left the residence where he was staying some 20 minutes before coup plotters attacked it. Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel there on ropes, shooting, in an apparent attempt to seize him just after Erdoğan had left, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

But as he flew from Marmaris on a business jet, two F-16 fighter jets locked their radar targeting system on the president’s plane, according to an account first reported by Reuters and later confirmed to the Guardian.

The jets didn’t fire after the presidential plane’s pilot told the fighter jet pilots over the radio that it was a Turkish Airlines flight, a senior counter-terrorism official told the Guardian.

But that came later. At around 9pm, General Mehmet Dişli, the brother of a long-serving MP with the ruling AK party, allegedly gave the order that set the coup in motion, sending army special forces officers to arrest the military’s senior command. Tanks began rolling out into the streets of Ankara, and an hour later they had closed down Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.

Cemalettin Haşimi, a senior adviser of prime minister Binali Yıldırım, watched it all with a sense of foreboding. At 10.24pm, after surveying besieged Ankara, he walked into the office of the prime ministry’s undersecretary.

“Is it real?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s real,” came the reply. “But we are not sure if it’s within the chain of command or just a group in the army.”

By 10.37pm they had conferred with Yıldırım, who was in Istanbul, deciding to declare it an attempted coup on national television. They called TRT, but 10 minutes later the channel was overrun. So Haşimi called the private channel NTV, and minutes later Yıldırım was denouncing the plot.

Meanwhile, there were chaotic scenes in Ankara and Istanbul. A statement appeared on the military’s website and was circulated by email declaring it had taken control to restore democracy, feeding into the fears of government officials who worried the military chain of command had endorsed the takeover. Haşimi claimed that judges aligned with the coup had begun calling on associates to adhere to the military’s demands.

The national intelligence building and the police headquarters were attacked from the air. In the latter, helicopters had targeted the intelligence department in the top three floors of the facility, unleashing a hail of shattered glass and concrete that still scars the building.

“It was a nightmare,” said Murat Karakullukcu, a police official who spent the night at the headquarters through the attack and had served at UN peacekeeping missions in Kosovo. “Our first thought was how to survive, and then we started shooting at the helicopters with small arms.”

Back at the prime ministry, despair was setting in. They had resolved to make a final stand in the parliament, when Erdoğan appeared on a live broadcast at 12.37am on a reporter’s iPhone, exhorting the people to defend democracy.

“What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?” asked one of the ministers in attendance.

“That was the moment when the psychology were reversed and we thought we were going to win,” said Haşimi. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. holds split view of cleric Erdogan blames for Turkish coup

The Wall Street Journal reports: [Fethullah] Gulen’s championing of Turkish democracy and nonviolence discredits to many the idea that the spiritual leader could have played a role in the coup, even if followers within the military did.

Still, supporters of Mr. Gulen have directly challenged Mr. Erdogan in recent years.

Their break was sealed in 2013, said Turkey watchers, when Gulenist media and supporters in the judiciary and police force made public tapes implicating Mr. Erdogan and other members of his government in an alleged kickback scheme. Mr. Erdogan’s government has responded by purging the ranks of both institutions in recent years.

Mr. Gulen, in the past, hasn’t made secret his hope that his supporters, who promote Turkish nationalism and Islamic values, would gradually dominate the ranks of the country’s bureaucracy.

“You must move into the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers,” Mr. Gulen said in a famous 1999 sermon to his supporters that was broadcast on Turkish television. “You must wait until such time as you have got all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institution in Turkey.”

Mr. Erdogan said Monday that his government is days away from compiling evidence to submit to the U.S. for Mr. Gulen’s extradition, and once more demanded Washington hand him over. While toning down previous statements by his government—his prime minister said over the weekend that any country refusing to hand over Mr. Gulen would be in a “war” with Turkey—Mr. Erdogan nonetheless was insistent.

“We are strategic partners, we are model partners,” Mr. Erdogan said in a CNN interview. “And the U.S. has to extradite that individual to Turkey. I do hope that the U.S. will do that.” [Continue reading…]

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Coup attempt in Turkey accelerates drive towards an authoritarian state

The Guardian reports: In the aftermath of the Turkish coup attempt, the country’s parliament delivered an ode to democracy that represented an extremely rare display of unity between the government and opposition parties.

“It is precious and historic that all party groups in the parliament have adopted a common attitude and rhetoric against the coup attempt,” the assembly said in a statement on Saturday. “This common attitude and rhetoric will add to the strength of our nation and national will.”

The moment of solidarity, built on shared repulsion at the prospect of another military intervention in Turkish politics, was fleeting. Once he had regained his footing, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan showed no signs of gratitude to opposition parties whose condemnation of the attempted putsch contributed to the speed of its collapse, describing the failed coup as a “gift from God” that would allow a thorough purge of his enemies.

If the abortive coup does provide Erdoğan with the momentum he needs to achieve his central goal of changing Turkey’s constitution and concentrating power in a dominant presidency, it could have long-term repercussions for the country’s political stability, and consequently for its economic prospects and its place in the world, not least as a bastion of Nato’s south-eastern flank.

“We would have liked Erdoğan to use this as an opportunity for a more open democratic society, but the rhetoric has been one of vengeance,” said Hişyar Özsoy, an MP and spokesman on foreign affairs of the leftist pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP).

The HDP’s unexpected success in elections last year presented a significant obstacle to Erdoğan’s constitutional ambitions. Since then, the president has sought to link them to Kurdish militants, lifting their parliamentary immunity and pursuing HDP members in the courts. “We expect this coup attempt to lead to even greater repression,” Özsoy said.

For the time being, the post-coup purges ordered by Erdoğan have been focused on alleged followers of Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Islamic scholar. However, the scale of the crackdown, with more than 6,000 detentions, and the targeting of the judiciary in general and the constitutional court in particular, suggest to many observers that the aim is to use the passions raised by the abortive coup to eliminate the last vestiges of independence in Turkey’s justice system. [Continue reading…]

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Erdoğan’s ‘Reichstag fire’

Matthew Karnitschnig writes: Even before the last shots were fired in the small hours of Saturday, it was clear that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wouldn’t let a coup attempt go to waste.

Whatever faint hopes there may have been in Washington and Europe that he would capitalize on the outrage over the attempted putsch among the Turkish population and the political opposition to show a commitment to democratic ideals quickly faded, however.

Within hours, the purges of the judiciary and military had begun. While it could take months to determine what this “cleansing” will mean for the future of Turkey, this much is certain: Ankara’s fraught relations with the West just got a lot more complicated.

“He had a golden opportunity to change the narrative,” said Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank. “Instead, he chose the path of vengeance and score-settling. That will make it far more difficult for Western allies to stand by him.” [Continue reading…]

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‘No excuse’ for Turkey to abandon rule of law, says EU’s Mogherini

Reuters reports: EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned the Turkish government on Monday against taking steps that would damage the constitutional order following a failed weekend coup.

“We were the first… during that tragic night to say that the legitimate institutions needed to be protected,” she told reporters on arrival at an EU foreign ministers meeting, which was also to be attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country,” she said in Brussels. “There is no excuse for any steps that takes the country away from that.”

She also said: “The democratic and legitimate institutions needed to be protected. Today, we will say together with the ministers that this obviously doesn’t mean that the rule of law and the system of checks and balances does not count.”

“On the contrary, it needs to be protected for the sake of the country itself. So we will send a strong message.”

Other ministers also expressed concerns about events after the coup. Mogherini’s fellow EU commissioner, Johannes Hahn, who is dealing with Turkey’s membership request, said he had the impression that the government had prepared lists of those such as judges to be arrested even before the coup took place.

“It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.” [Continue reading…]

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