Cyprus-Forum.com

[Oracle]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.

04 March 2010

By Sabrina Tavernise

THE detention of top military officers in Turkey last week was nothing less than historic. The military, long considered untouchable in Turkey, was pushed from its political pedestal with startling finality.
The moment, years in the making, was more whimper than bang. But now that it is here, it raises an existential question for this Nato member: what sort of country will Turkey be?

This question goes to the very heart of modern Turkey, a Muslim democracy whose military was a potent force in its political life for most of its 86-year history.

Not only has the military been politically defanged, but it has proved unable or unwilling to fight back. Dozens of officers were detained last week, and several senior ones were arrested. Top military leaders met and managed to produce only a brief statement, never mind a coup.

"What came out of that?" said Baskin Oran, professor of international relations at Ankara University. "A big nothing. This is finished. Turkey has crossed the border."

"The old ideology is bankrupt, that much we know," said Soli Ozel, professor of political science at Bilgi University. "But what are we going to be putting in its stead?"

Turkey is moving into uncharted territory, causing deep anxiety among millions of secular Turks who fear prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – a former Islamist who won 47 per cent of the vote in the last election – will trample on their rights.

That worry deepened this week, when Turkish authorities made two more controversial arrests – of an active duty general and a state prosecutor who had investigated Islamic networks.

How Turkey resolves this identity crisis will reverberate beyond its borders. It has the second-largest army in Nato after America. It is strategically placed, with Russia to the north and the Middle East to the south. It is a candidate for membership in the European Union. Decades of growth have made it the seventh-largest economy in Europe.

Last week's detentions and arrests capped a month of high political drama that began on 22 January, when a small liberal newspaper, Taraf, published what it said were military documents from a 2003 meeting describing preparations for a coup. The documents, said the paper, were in a suitcase and included diagrams of two Istanbul mosques that were to have small bombs go off in their courtyards, creating an emergency that would justify a military takeover. The military acknowledged a meeting took place, but denied plans for bombings or a coup. Even so, on Monday of last week, Turkish authorities began detaining officers and by the end of the week had more than 60 in custody, including two retired generals. "Now the army is pacified, eliminated as a power from the political scene," said Haldun Solmazturk, also a retired general. "Now the military is touchable."

That is a profound change. Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 by General Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who imposed radical change in language and custom on a largely illiterate, agrarian society. The military, together with the judiciary and state bureaucracy, wielded immense power, protecting Turkish democracy "as if the country was a perpetually immature child," said Halil Berktay, history professor at Sabanci University.

"The military came to acquire a sense of, 'this is our land, this is our Republic," he said. It deposed elected governments four times, most recently in 1997.

That role began to change with the rise of Erdogan, a tough-talking mayor who represented a rising underclass of religious Turks. He was a confounding mix, from a background of political Islam, but with an agenda of bringing Turkey into the European Union, where his supporters do business.

Although he was despised by the secular establishment, his party, Justice and Development, won election victory in 2007.

The fact that the military has not responded to the arrests also reflects a leadership opposed to intervention. Army chief General Ilker Basbug has spoken out against military meddling and is believed to have had good relations with Erdogan.

But to Erdogan's critics, the arrests look suspiciously like raw efforts to silence the opposition. And now that he has control over most of the levers of power – the presidency, the government bureaucracy and parliament – they worry that his impulses will be unchecked.

Yildiray Ogur, an editor at Taraf said today's Turkey was a slow-motion version of the Soviet Union in 1991, when idols fell and people came out of the woodwork confessing secrets.

What comes next for Turkey?

Ankara University's Oran, who backs Erdogan's efforts to take the military out of politics, believes his Islamist, working-class party has grown comfortable, and is ready to transform. "It has become bourgeois," Oran said. "They will always be Muslims, but they won't be Islamists."



http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

[Oracle]

What comes next for Turkey?

German Islamist fanatics jailed for planning 'second September 11'

Four Muslim fanatics who planned "bloodbaths" at US targets in Germany in an attempt to create a "second September 11" have been jailed.

Allan Hall, in Berlin
Published: 11:45AM GMT 04 Mar 2010

Fritz Gelowicz, the ring leader, got 12 years, his German sidekick Daniel Schneider - both converts to Islam - 11 years while two accomplices were sentenced to five years each for their roles in a plot to detonate explosives 100 times more powerful than those used in the London Underground bombings of July 2005.

The four men, known as the "Sauerland Cell" after the tourist region where they stockpiled massive amounts of chemicals for the bombs, were jailed at the end of a nine-month trial.


In closing speeches top prosecutor Volker Brinkmann said the gang "had planned a mass murder unrivalled in Germany. They acted out of blind hatred for American soldiers," he said.

"It is terrible to think they enjoyed the concept of terror attacks that would have killed at least 150 soldiers as well as women and children.

"They appointed themselves masters over life and death."

Gelowicz, Schneider and Adem Yilmaz, who is a Turkish national, were captured in the Sauerland region in 2007 after stockpiling vast quantities of hydrogen peroxide, suitable for making car bombs and other explosives.

Attila Selek, a Turkish German, was later arrested in Turkey where he was to acquire the detonators for the bombs. He was extradited to Germany in 2008.

The group was under the surveillance of intelligence agents while their plot crystallised. Whenever they left their hideout, agents swapped the chemicals for water, rendering their plans useless.

All have given detailed accounts of their terrorist training at a camp in Pakistan's "bandit country" of Waziristan together with details of the US bases that they planned to blitz with their home-made devices for the Islamic Jihadist Union.

The terror attacks were to take place in October 2007, when parliament was to vote to extend German participation in the NATO force in Afghanistan.

"The confessions of the accused were the most comprehensive talks concerning terrorism ever heard in a German court of law," said Rolf Tophoven, director of the institute of terrorism research and security policy in Essen.

"They gave an exact description of what was going on in the terror training camps in Pakistan."

Schneider also admitted to trying to kill a policeman who he shot at when they moved in to break up their cell in September 2007.

The US Air Force base at Ramstein as well as discos, restaurants and nightclubs in the area used by service personnel were written down as potential targets for a series of bombings.

In what has been called the biggest surveillance operation in German post-war history, police found the three suspects as they were preparing some 730 litres of what they thought was hydrogen peroxide liquid. "This would have resulted in about 410 kilograms of explosives - 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings," prosecutors said.

German authorities have collected valuable insight into the workings of the IJU, which has ties to Al-Qaeda. "We now know how recruitment works, how people are smuggled into the Afghan-Pakistani border region and how the training takes place," said federal prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum.

In the meantime, Gelowicz, Schneider and Selek have dissociated themselves from terrorism. In their final appeals to the court, they called their actions a "mistake." Yilmaz also confessed but declined to address the judges during the final hearing.

"I could have and should have acted differently," the 24-year-old Schneider said, adding that he hoped to complete a university degree behind bars. He said that he would accept the responsibility for his actions and accept his punishment All said they turned to terror in disgust at the wars in Iraq and Afganistan. Germany's intelligence agencies believe that, with 4,500 troops currently in Afghanisan, the risk of a terror attack in the country remains high.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... er-11.html

[Malapapa]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

[YFred]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

[Malapapa]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

[YFred]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

Not at all, but you think that you are insulting us. We don't give shit what you or anybody else calls us. We are who and what we are, what?

[Oracle]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

Not at all, but you think that you are insulting us. We don't give shit what you or anybody else calls us. We are who and what we are, what?

However, what you call yourselves seemed to be of some significance to you earlier in recognising the Genocide as your work!

[YFred]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

Not at all, but you think that you are insulting us. We don't give shit what you or anybody else calls us. We are who and what we are, what?

However, what you call yourselves seemed to be of some significance to you earlier in recognising the Genocide as your work!

Me thinks you forgot your tablets again.

[Malapapa]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

Not at all, but you think that you are insulting us.

I've no idea what you're thinking most of the time. So don't assume you know what I'm thinking, what?

We don't give shit what you or anybody else calls us. We are who and what we are, what?

You're right to be described as Cyprus Turks, as far as I'm concerned, until you start behaving like Cyprus Cypriots.

[YFred]

Roll on ...


Turkey enters new territory in wake of army coup arrests.


http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Turkey-e ... 6121917.jp

Oh dear. Have the vast majority of Cyprus Turks backed the wrong turkey?

If you wish to insult us you must come up with a more original comment then call us Cyprus Turks old chap, what?

What makes you think I was trying to insult you old chap, what? Are you insulted if I call you a Cyprus Turk? That's what Bayrak calls you.

Not at all, but you think that you are insulting us.

I've no idea what you're thinking most of the time. So don't assume you know what I'm thinking, what?

We don't give shit what you or anybody else calls us. We are who and what we are, what?

You're right to be described as Cyprus Turks, as far as I'm concerned, until you start behaving like Cyprus Cypriots.

Do not worry, I read you like a book and I can't even read.