Tensions and divisions linger one year after failed coup in Turkey
Turkey marked on Sunday with a string of events in major cities the anniversary of a failed coup, but tensions and divisions are still lingering in the NATO country because of sweeping crackdown against opposition circles.
Many events were organized in Ankara and Istanbul to commemorate the night of July 15, 2016, when thousands of unarmed civilians took to the streets to defy rogue soldiers who commandeered tanks and warplanes and bombed parliament in an unprecedented attempt to seize power.
With July 15 declared a national holiday in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went to Istanbul to join thousands making their way toward the Istanbul bridge over the Bosphorus, which divides the main city and economic hub.
Last year, crowds of civilians stood defiant in front of tanks and troops halting traffic between the city’s European and Asian sides. Some 250 people died and 2,000 others were wounded before the coup attempt was put down, a show of popular defiance that has likely ended decades of military interference in Turkish politics.
But the coup’s greatest legacy and the dramatic events that shaped Turkey since then has further divided Turks between those who support Erdogan and those who don’t.
Those against Erdogan and his ruling and conservative Justice and Development Party ( AKP) also accused the dominant president of reshaping the secular atmosphere with his authoritarian and Islamist- rooted politics.
In the aftermath of the coup attempt, Turkey declared a state of emergency that has been in place ever since. Some 140,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the civil service and private sector and more than 50,000 were detained for alleged links to USbased cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara believes to be behind the failed coup.
In the latest government decree published Friday evening, nearly 7,400 more state employees were fired, including teachers, academics, military and police officers.
The government calls the crackdown necessary to purge state institutions of those linked to Gulen, but critics say the dismissals are arbitrary.
“The state of emergency will have to stay in effect until the traitors of this heinous network are obliterated, we have an obligation to do this, there is simply no other way,” said an AKP official to Xinhua on Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
He also called on the US to extradite Gulen who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999. The US, like most European countries, thinks that more evidence is needed to link the coup attempt to his supporters, infuriating the Ankara govern- ment and causing anti- Western sentiment in the country.
“Those who say that they are not convinced are our allies. It is really frustrating to be at a point of trying to prove that a thief that has entered your home, stole your belongings and fled, is really a thief. But we are determined to get him ( Gulen) back in Turkey and to put him on trial for the crimes that he committed,” added the AKP source.