Keyword: Turkey
Former Turkish officer at NATO: Coup attempt was never meant to succeed
A former Turkish officer who served at NATO headquarters in Brussels but was sacked and recalled to Turkey as part of an investigation into a failed coup on July 15 claims that the putsch was clumsily executed and never intended to bring down the government, but rather served President Erdoğan to eliminate his opponents.
Why the West ‘failed to understand’ Turkey
Erdoğan has exploited the presence of Gülen-inspired people in the state bureaucracy as a tool to silence all opposition and grasp yet more power. If the Gülen movement did not exist, the president would have needed to create another “enemy of the state” to fight against in order to reach his ultimate aim.
The dominant assessment in NATO: Turkey’s President Erdoğan staged the coup himself
Senior NATO sources tell aldrimer.no that they believe Erdoğan staged the coup himself. However, they stress that there is no written NATO documentation for that claim, because it is simply too sensitive. That’s because all member nation’s have the right to access to all intelligence information gathered by the alliance.
Retired on disability, former bomb disposal expert kept in jail for a month over Gülen links
Bilal Konakçı, a former bomb disposal expert for the İzmir Police Department who was retired after he lost his right hand and both eyes while trying to dispose of a bomb in 2009, was detained on Dec. 20 over links to the faith-based Gülen movement, and his wife is worried about his health as authorities refuse to allow the family to contact him.
5 children abandoned in front of prison as mother detained
A video shared on social media shows five children left alone in tears in front of a Prison in Ankara after their mother was detained while they were visiting their father in prison. In the video a child opens the door of a car in the prison parking lot, showing his brothers crying, and says in tears, “We are five brothers, left alone. We have a handicapped brother. I commend those people to God’s punishment.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make himself a virtual dictator in Turkey
The proposed constitutional change grants the presidency new powers to directly appoint a vast range of public officials – cabinet ministers, provincial governors, and judges to the highest courts in the land. Simply put, the government’s plans are an enabling act: they are designed to strengthen the individual over the collective.
A Case Study In How Lobbyists For Turkish Government Manipulate The American Media on Gulen Issue
Turkish news outlets lit up this weekend after a former Republican lawmaker published an op-ed at The Hill calling on the U.S. government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Muslim cleric whose return to Turkey is an obsession for the NATO nation’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Gülen says he could be blamed for assassination of an MHP, CHP politician
US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen said on Monday that the possible assassination of an important politician from either the Republican People’s Party (CHP) or the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the coming days might be blamed on him by pro-government circles.
Erdogan plotted Turkey purge before coup, say Brussels spies
The European intelligence contradicts the Turkish government’s claim that exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen was behind the plot to overthrow the Turkish government. Ankara is seeking Mr Gulen’s extradition from the US. The huge wave of arrests was already previously prepared.
Victims of Turkey’s purge exploited also by lawyers with exorbitantly high fees
Victims of Turkey’s post-coup purge have been taking another toll from lawyers who ask outrageously high prices either to keep themselves out of trouble or to exploit from the lost causes. In Turkey, the presumption of innocence has been dramatically reversed and now everybody is assumed guilty until they prove their innocence.
