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| People walk by a Turkish flag in central Istanbul, Monday, July 18, 2016. Turkey's Interior Ministry has fired nearly 9,000 police officers, bureaucrats and others and detained thousands of suspected plotters following a foiled coup against the government, Turkey's state-run news agency reported Monday. |
ANKARA,
Turkey (AP) -- The purging of thousands of alleged plotters of a
failed coup raised tensions Monday between Turkey and the West, with
U.S. and European officials urging restraint, while Ankara insisted
Washington extradite an exile accused of orchestrating the plot.
Authorities
have fired nearly 9,000 police officers, bureaucrats and others, while
detaining thousands more alleged to have been involved in Friday night's
attempted coup, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Former
air force commander Akin Ozturk, alleged to be the ringleader of the
uprising, was put under arrest following questioning by a magistrate
along with 25 other suspects, the news agency said. Ozturk, who has
denied involvement and insisted he had tried to suppress the rebellion,
appeared in video from Turkish TV looking bruised with a bandage over
his ear.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
refused to rule out bringing back the death penalty, telling broadcaster
CNN in an interview via a government translator, "There is a clear
crime of treason." He added that it would be up to parliament to decide.
Anadolu
said 8,777 employees attached to the Interior Ministry were dismissed,
including 30 governors, 52 civil service inspectors and 16 legal
advisers. Other media reports said police, military police and members
of the coast guard also were removed from duty.
During
the uprising by a faction of the military, warplanes fired on
government buildings and tanks rolled into the streets of major cities
before the rebellion was put down by forces loyal to the government and
civilians who took to the streets. The top brass did not support the
coup.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 232
people - 208 government supporters he called "martyrs," as well as 24
coup plotters - died in the unrest. His voice cracked and he wept as he
spoke with reporters after a Cabinet meeting and repeated a question his
grandson had put to him: "Why are they killing people?"
He said he had no answer, but that Turkey would make the coup plotters answer "in such a way that the whole world will see."
As
Western officials expressed alarm at the rapid roundup of so many by
their key NATO ally, Turkish government officials explained that the
plotters in the military had been under investigation and launched their
ill-planned operation out of panic.
The swift
move against so many reflected the prior investigation, the government
said. It alleged the coup conspirators were loyal to moderate cleric
Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who lives in exile in
Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, and espouses a philosophy that blends a
mystical form of Islam with democracy.
Erdogan
has often accused Gulen of trying to overthrow the government, and
Turkey has demanded his extradition, labeling his movement a terrorist
organization and putting him on trial in absentia.
Gulen strongly denies
the government's charges and has suggested that Friday's attempted coup
could have been staged, as a pretext for the government to seize even
more power.
U.S. officials have said that the
U.S. will consider extraditing Gulen, if the Turkish government offers
evidence that he was involved in the plot or committed crimes. White
House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the U.S. would follow procedures
in a decades-old extradition treaty and called Turkish charges that the
U.S. was harboring Gulen "factually incorrect."
But Yildirim said the normal U.S. legal processes would not be good enough.
"We
would be disillusioned and would question our friendship if our friends
were to say to us 'Show us the evidence.' despite all the efforts ...
to eradicate the elected government and the national will of a country,"
he said, while adding that the Justice Ministry was preparing documents
to send to the United States.
Over the
weekend, Turkey responded to the coup attempt by rounding up some 6,000
people, including hundreds of judges and prosecutors.
Reacting
to the large number of arrests in the military and the judiciary, as
well as Erdogan's suggestion that Turkey could bring back the death
penalty, Western officials were urging Turkey to maintain the rule of
law.
Earnest said President Barack Obama would
call Erdogan soon to reiterate U.S. support for Turkey's democratically
elected civilian government and make the case for restraint and respect
for the freedoms enshrined in the Turkish constitution.
EU
foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said at a news conference with
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the coup "is no excuse to take
the country away from fundamental rights and the rule of law, and we
will be extremely vigilant on that."
Kerry added that Turkey must "uphold the highest standards for the country's democratic institutions and the rule of law."
While he recognized the need to apprehend the coup plotters, Kerry said: "We caution against a reach that goes beyond that."
Mogherini
said the talks on Turkey's bid to join the European Union would end if
Ankara restores the death penalty. That message was echoed by Germany,
the EU's biggest state.
"The institution of
the death penalty can only mean that such a country could not be a
member," Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said
in Berlin.
NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg, who said he spoke to Erdogan, praised the Turkish people
for showing "great courage," but he also said it was essential for the
alliance member to "ensure full respect for democracy and its
institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental
freedoms."
For the fourth night in a row,
hundreds took to public squares in major cities, including Istanbul,
Ankara and Izmir, in a fresh show of support for the government. They
waved Turkish flags, shouted pro-government slogans and sang praise of
Erdogan.
Mostafa Minawi, director of the
Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative at Cornell University, called the
failed coup "a gift for President Erdogan, given him all the
justification he needs to implement further clamp down measures against
any dissenters, in the process sinking Turkey deeper into
authoritarianism."
