Insecure Erdogan texts 68m Turks to stay on streets
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sent a text to all Turks urging them to remain on the streets as he tightens his grip on power after last week’s failed coup.
He issued the appeal on Thursday after announcing a three-month state of emergency that will enable him to bypass parliament in curbing press freedoms and the right to demonstrate.
Huge rallies are continuing across the country every night, with an increasing air of hero worship for Erdogan.
‘‘Don’t give up on the resistance for your country, land and flag,’’ the text message, aimed at 68 million people in virtually every household in the country, read.
‘‘Resistance and the watch of democracy goes on to teach traitors and terrorists a lesson.’’
Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was unimpressed. ‘‘It shows that he still feels insecure,’’ he said. ‘‘Keeping the masses on the streets is his ultimate survival instrument, and he is continuing to use it.’’
A similar text message sent on the night of the failed coup brought droves of people on to the streets to block the tanks.
Erdogan has said that he was told that a coup attempt was under way by his brother-in-law. However, the Turkish army has stated that it was informed by MIT, the Turkish intelligence service more than six hours before the first tanks rolled into Istanbul – raising questions about why no immediate action was taken to nip the rebellion in the bud.
The state of emergency boosts the president’s powers dramatically, but Erdogan said he wanted only to defend democracy. ‘‘The aim is to be able to take fast and effective steps,’’ he said.
Government sources insist that the new measures will be applied only to those people believed to be connected to a movement run by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. He has denied involvement, but there is increasing evidence that his followers were at the core of the coup attempt.
However, there is concern that the government crackdown will undermine the stability of the country. More than 11,000 people in the military, judiciary, education system and police force have been arrested, and many times that number have been dismissed from their posts.
There have been chaotic scenes at the Caglayan courthouse in Istanbul where most of the soldiers accused of taking part in the coup have been charged. The court is working 24 hours a day to deal with the enormous number of suspects, who are being held in jail cells rather than military barracks for fear that they will be lynched by soldiers loyal to the government.
‘‘The families are having really hard times,’’ Nazli Tanburaci Altac, a defence lawyer, said. ‘‘Some of them don’t hear anything about their sons for days. There are some families who haven’t heard their son’s voice since Friday. Some of them call and ask, ‘Is he dead’?’’
The coup may have failed partly because some conspirators got cold feet, a source close to the investigation said yesterday. An encrypted messaging service used by the plotters has been discovered, pointing to the involvement of up to half of the military’s majors and colonels. A third of Turkey’s generals have been arrested, indicating that the plot went far wider than initially thought.
Some of the officers who fought back against the coup had themselves been accused of plotting an uprising in 2007, when the military opposed the selection of Abdullah Gul for president. Dozens of highranking officers were arrested and imprisoned, but were later returned to their former positions.
In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, many of the judges and prosecutors who tried the alleged coup-plotters in 2007 have themselves now been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the failed revolt.
Eight Turkish officers who fled the country after the botched coup have been jailed for two months in Greece.
The verdict was delivered by a judge in the northeast city of Alexandroupolis, where the officers’ Black Hawk helicopter landed at the weekend.
Greek security forces are on high alert, bolstering checkpoints on the Aegean islands of Symi, Leros, Kos and Rhodes after reports that more Turkish officers were trying to flee to Greece.
The eight jailed yesterday were charged with illegal entry to the country; an offence that can carry a five-year sentence. However, the judge ruled that there were mitigating circumstances.
All have denied prior knowledge of the insurrection, claiming that they were merely following orders to pick up injured military personnel in Istanbul.
‘‘Their helicopter had come under fire by police, they said, making their escape ‘‘a matter of life or death’’.
Wearing bulletproof vests, their heads covered with colourful shirts, the men were jeered by members of Greece’s Turkishspeaking Muslim minority as they arrived in court.
Plans to extradite the eight stalled after Erdogan signalled his intention to reinstate the death penalty in Turkey.
‘‘Resistance and the watch of democracy goes on to teach traitors and terrorists a lesson.’’ President Recep Tayyip Erdogan