Coup attempt will hurt Ankara’s relationships

What the Arabic press is writing about the thwarted coup in Turkey and its legacy

In the chaos of the failed coup perpetrated by some in the Turkish military, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed the finger at Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

“It was neither the military nor the secular opposition that attempted the coup against the legitimate president but the Gulen movement, which Mr Erdogan calls a parallel state,” wrote Abdul Rahman Al Rashid in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat.

“In Turkey, hundreds of investigators and security teams are tracking down this movement, which is considered the largest Islamic group in Turkey and Central Asia. Fethullah Gulen is the main suspect in the attempted coup and Mr Erdogan’s government is demanding his extradition from the United States,” he wrote.

Mr Erdogan was betrayed by a politicised religious group whose members are officers and civil servants.

“Investigators are not looking for weapons at the workplaces and residences of the suspects. Rather, they are searching for re- ligious publications produced by Mr Gulen that prove their association with the Islamic group.”

At least 60,000 people have been arrested or fired from their jobs in connection with the coup attempt. They include judges and teachers in addition to soldiers and commanders. The high number of arrests shows that the fear held by the authorities lies with the Gulen movement's influence across the country, explained Al Rashid.

Writing in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, Salem Nassar noted that Mr Gulen denied his involvement in the attempted coup and accused Mr Erdogan of devising the putsch to take revenge on those objecting to the constitutional amendment in favour of a presidential system.

Nassar said that, regardless of the motivations for the coup, the events will hurt Turkish-American relations in the short-term.

“The permanent representative of Turkey to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Salih Mutlu Sen, announced at a press conference held in Jeddah that ‘the government knew of the possibility of a coup’, however, nobody asked him why the government allowed the rebels to carry out their scheme, if it had really known about it,” Nassar wrote.

“Multu Sen said that many of the rebels work in government institutions and most of them live in houses provided by the state, hence the available information on their addresses and workplaces. A number of them left behind correspondence that gave away their collaborators in the failed coup.”

According to the author, this demonstrates that the plot was constructed by the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency, Hakan Fidan. Mr Fidan is a close confidante of Mr Erdogan.

“The internal and external support garnered by Mr Erdogan allows him to perform an in-depth purge of the military, to neutralise his opponents in the judiciary and to strengthen his grip on the media. Mr Gulen’s followers believe that the lists for revenge were prepared in advance, and that the ‘conspirators’ left the names of their collaborators by pure coincidence to be used as witnesses for the prosecution at court,” remarked Nassar.

“Mr Gulen and his followers claim that the coup was timed to coincide with Mr Erdogan’s holiday at a remote hotel in Marmara Resort so that the incident would allegedly occur without his knowledge and would take him by surprise,” he concluded.