Turkey Failed Coup: Ex-Air Force Chief Ozturk Denies Role in Coup
Former Turkish Air Force Chief Akin Ozturk has denied planning the failed coup.
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Former Turkish Air Force Chief Akin Ozturk has not confessed to playing a role in the failed military coup that attempted to topple the government at the weekend, two private broadcasters said on Monday, contradicting a state media report.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said earlier on Monday that Ozturk had confessed to helping to plot the coup. However, Haberturk and NTV cited what they said was his testimony to prosecutors, reporting that he denied playing a role.
Turkey has detained more than 7,500 suspects involved in the coup plot seeking to oust the government, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced on Monday.
Giving a new toll, he said 208 people were killed by the coup bid, including 145 civilians, 60 police officers and three soldiers. Nearly 1,500 were wounded, he added. The authorities have said more than 100 coup plotters have been killed.
Several senior Turkish generals who plotted the coup have fled the country.
The earlier figure stood at 6,000 as Turkey widened its crackdown on suspected supporters of the failed military coup on Sunday.
President Tayyip Erdogan and the government accused the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan. The President now accuses Gulen of trying to create a “parallel structure” within the courts, police, armed forces and media.
Erdogan’s supporters gathered in front of his Istanbul home to call for the plotters to face the death penalty, which Turkey outlawed in 2004 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.
He said a “terror group” led by Gulen had “ruined” the armed forces, that its members were being arrested in all military ranks, and that a purge of this “virus” would continue. Gulen denied any connection with the coup.
The President had called on Turks to stay on the streets until Friday, and late into Sunday night, his supporters thronged squares and streets, honking horns and waving flags.
Pictures on social media showed detained soldiers stripped to the waist, some wearing only their underpants, handcuffed and lying packed together on the floor of a sports hall where they were being held in Ankara.
One video posted on Twitter showed detained generals with bruises and bandages.
The Foreign Ministry raised the death toll to more than 290, including over 100 rebels, and said 1,400 people were hurt.
The violence shocked the nation of almost 80 million, once seen as a model Muslim democracy, where living standards have risen steadily for more than a decade and where the army last used force to stage a successful coup more than 30 years ago.
It also shattered fragile confidence among Turkey’s allies about security in the NATO country, which is a leading member of the US-led coalition against Islamic State. Turkey had already been hit by repeated suicide bombings over the past year and is struggling to contain an insurgency by Kurdish separatists.
Arrests
With expectations growing of a heavy clampdown on dissent, European politicians warned Erdogan the coup attempt did not give him a blank cheque to disregard the rule of law, and that he risked isolating himself internationally as he strengthens his position at home.
Broadcaster NTV cited Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying more arrests were expected.
By Sunday evening, authorities had rounded up nearly 3,000 suspected military plotters, ranging from top commanders to foot soldiers, and the same number of judges and prosecutors after forces loyal to Erdogan crushed the attempted coup on Saturday.
Among those arrested was General Bekir Ercan Van, commander of the Incirlik air base from which US aircraft launch air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, an official said. Erdogan’s chief military assistant was also detained, the broadcaster CNN Turk said.
Saudi Arabia detained Turkey’s military attache to Kuwait at Turkey’s request, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV said.
Security forces also clashed with remnants of the coup plotters at Istanbul’s second airport on Sunday and at an air base in central Turkey, an official said, adding that arrests had been made and the situation was under control.
On Saturday, Labour Minister Suleyman Soylu told the broadcaster Haberturk he believed Washington was behind the coup attempt. US Secretary of State John Kerry described suggestions of a US role as “utterly false”, and said on Sunday that Washington had had no advance intelligence of the insurrection.
The Pentagon also announced on Sunday that operations from Turkey by the US-led coalition against Islamic State had resumed after Ankara reopened its air space, which had been closed during the coup attempt.
However, US facilities at the Incirlik base were still operating on internal power sources after Turkey cut the mains power supply. Kerry said the difficulty for US planes using the base may have been a result of Turkish aircraft flown in support of the coup using it to refuel.
Parallel Structure
The crackdown intensifies a long-standing push by Erdogan to root out Gulen’s influence.
The cleric denied playing any role in the attempted coup, which he called an affront to democracy, and on Sunday told reporters he believed Erdogan had staged the putsch.
Erdogan said Turkey would demand that Western countries return Gulen’s supporters living there, and submit an extradition request for Gulen himself to the United States.
Gulen, however, said he would comply with any extradition ruling but was “not really worried” about one.
Kerry said he had no evidence Gulen was behind the plot, and urged Turkish authorities to compile evidence as rapidly as possible for any extradition request. But even before the coup attempt was over, Erdogan promised a purge of the armed forces.
Erdogan’s critics say he will also use the purge to eliminating dissenting voices in the judiciary.
This article has been edited for length and clarity. With further inputs from PTI and Reuters.
(This article is published in arrangement with Reuters.)
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