Erdogan equates coup to mediaeval battle

Vessel breaks in two off northwest coast

ANKARA, Aug 27, (Agencies): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday compared the defeat of last year’s attempted coup against his rule to key events in the country’s history, including a 1071 triumph by Turkic tribes over the Byzantines in Anatolia.

Erdogan has in recent years sought to put greater emphasis not just on the history of the Ottoman dynasty – who conquered Constantinople in 1453 – but of Turkic tribes in pre-Ottoman history.

Coinciding with a major protest event by the main opposition party at the western of the country, Erdogan on Saturday led a large-scale celebration to commemorate the 946th anniversary of the 1071 Battle of Malazgirt.

It was here that pre-Ottoman tribes led by Sultan Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantines and captured their Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in a victory seen as opening up Anatolia to Turkic peoples.

“Whoever Sultan Alp Arslan fought against, whoever (Seljuk) Sultan Kilic Arslan fought against, whoever Gazi Mustafa Kemal fought against, we fought them on July 15,” the president said in the speech at the scene of the battle in the eastern Mus province.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a key Ottoman commander in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, where Ottoman forces resisted an invasion by Allied powers, and went on to found the modern Republic in 1923.

“The game is the same, the aim the same. Only the script, the extras are different,” Erdogan said.

Throughout his speech, Erdogan was surrounded by men dressed in period costume as Seljuk fighters holding spears, wearing chain mail and boasting impressive handlebar moustaches.

Turkey accuses the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of ordering last year’s failed putsch and calls his movement the “Fethullah Terrorist Organisation” (FETO). Gulen strongly

confidence in (the commander’s) work.”

Israeli deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely told public radio on Sunday: “Haley was right.” “We shall not allow this blindness to continue.” (AFP)

Jordan, Germany disagree on status:

A Jordanian official said Sunday that Jordan is negotiating with Germany over the legal denies Ankara’s claims.

Erdogan described organisations outlawed by Turkey as terror groups – such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) and its Democratic Union Party (PYD) political wing – and “pawns” in an ongoing game.

Erdogan did not name any foreign country specifically but has strongly opposed the United States’ close alliance with YPG fighters in the battle against jihadists in Syria.

“FETO is a pawn. PKK, YPG, PYD, they are a pawn. Daesh (the Islamic State extremist group) is a pawn,” Erdogan thundered.

Event

“They are each a means used by powers that have their eye on our motherland,” Erdogan added, vowing that the 1071 battle’s August 26 anniversary would now be celebrated annually as a major national event.

Meanwhile, a dry cargo vessel broke in two in the Black Sea off Turkey’s northwest coast, television images showed early on Sunday, while the 11man crew was rescued.

Mongolian flag carrying Leonardo, a 114-meter-long dry cargo ship, started buckling and broke in two while on anchor off Istanbul’s Kilyos coast.

Half of the ship was taken ashore by tugboats, while the remainder is in the water gradually sinking.

Turkish media reports said the ship, constructed in 1975, was going to Istanbul’s Tuzla dockyard for repairs.

Furthermore, a Turkish-born German writer stuck in Spain because of an Ankara arrest warrant said Monday he never imaging being pursued in an EU country by those who want to “silence” him.

Dogan Akhanli, 60, said his arrest Saturday at Turkey’s behest was a “terrifying experience because I thought I was safe in European countries and that the long arm of arbitrariness and

status of German troops to be stationed in the kingdom, amid reports that disagreements delayed deployment.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Germany seeks immunity in Jordan for 250 soldiers who are part of the US-led campaign against Islamic State group extremists. The report says Jordan balked at the demand. arrogance would not reach that far”.

In a case that has further strained German-Turkish relations, Akhanli was arrested in his hotel room while holidaying in the Andalusian city of Granada, on the basis of an Interpol “red notice” from Turkey.

Berlin strongly protested, and a Madrid court on Sunday freed Akhanli from custody but ordered him to stay in the country and report weekly while Turkey has 40 days to send a formal extradition request.

“I can’t imagine that as a German citizen I will be surrendered to a non-EU country, but of course I am worried,” he told Der Spiegel news weekly.

He mentioned that a Swedish-Turkish journalist, named by Stockholm as Hamza Yalcin, had also been held in Spain on a Turkish arrest warrant.

Germany has dismissed the case against Akhanli as politically motivated, and Chancellor Angela Merkel warned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government Sunday not to “misuse” Interpol to pursue its critics.

Akhanli, speaking in a news conference televised live in Germany, described Erdogan as a president with “a despotic attitude” whose statements reflected “arrogance and paranoia”.

He said that if he somehow ended up back in Turkey, this would be “a judicial and political scandal” but vowed that “they will never silence me”.

Akhanli grew up in Istanbul and, in the aftermath of a military coup, was jailed from 1985-87. The biography on his website says he was tortured during his years as a “political prisoner”.

He emigrated to Germany in 1991, where he was granted political asylum. In 1998 Turkey stripped him of his citizenship, and he became a German citizen in 2001.

He has angered the Turkish government by writing about the World War I-era mass killings and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman empire.

The Jordanian official said talks with Germany are “subject to international diplomatic rules” and “equal mutual treatment.” He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters on the issue.

Germany’s defense ministry played down the report saying the negotiation process is ongoing and that “we are in fruitful talks with Jordan.”

“We already started the deployment ... and are expecting to be fully operational by October,” said a spokesman for the German defense ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Germany chose Jordan after previous host Turkey prevented German lawmakers from visiting the troops there. (AP)

Turkey must not ‘misuse’ Interpol:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday she was glad a Spanish court had ordered the conditional release of a Turkish-German writer wanted by Ankara and warned Turkey not to “misuse” Interpol to pursue its critics.

“That’s not on. We must not misuse international organisations such as Interpol” in such cases, she said on RTL television about the case of writer Dogan Akhanli, who was arrested Saturday at Turkey’s request while holidaying in Spain.

She said Germany was in close contact with Spain about the case and that she was ready to phone Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to discuss it if necessary.

Merkel said it was “unfortunately one of many cases” of Turkey pursuing German citizens, mentioning Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel of the Die Welt newspaper, who faces trial on terror charges. (AP)