Turkey protests to US over treatment of Erdogan bodyguards
TURKEY yesterday summoned the US ambassador in Ankara to protest about the “aggressive” action taken against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s bodyguards after they got into a brawl with protesters in Washington.
The action appeared to be in retaliation to calls in the US for strong measures against the Turkish security officers who were seen attacking protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence during Mr Erdoğan’s visit last week.
Two members of the security team were detained briefly before being released, but calls are growing for a more forceful US response to violence on American soil.
John Mccain, the Republican senator, has said the government should “throw their ambassador the hell out” of the US.
Samantha Power, former US ambassador to the United Nations, said that “clearly Erdoğan’s guards feel complete impunity, drawing on tools of repression they use at home and knowing he has their back, no matter what”.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said John Bass, the US ambassador to Ankara, was given a “written and verbal protest” over the treatment of the two security officers that it said was
“contrary to diplomatic rules and practices”.
The ministry said it told Mr Bass there were “lapses of security” during Mr Erdoğan’s stay and criticised “the inability of US authorities to take sufficient precautions at every stage of the official programme”.
However, the ministry said it emphasised to Mr Bass that this would not overshadow an otherwise “successful and important visit”.
The incident, and the subsequent handling of it, threatens already strained ties between Turkey and the US.
The two Nato allies are at odds over an American policy to arm Syrian Kurdish rebels fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria. Turkey considers the rebels to be terrorists; the US considers them as its best ally in defeating the jihadists.
The development came as more than 220 suspects, including more than two dozen Turkish former generals, went on trial yesterday accused of being among the ringleaders of last year’s attempted coup against Mr Erdoğan.
Protesters outside the court in Sincan, outside Ankara, demanded the death penalty and flung nooses at the defendants as they were marched into the building handcuffed and held by the security forces. Turkey blames the failed July 15 putsch on the Us-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a claim he strongly denies, and has launched a relentless purge against those deemed to have backed the plot.
Akin Ozturk, a former air force commander, was the first in a long line of defendants. Mr Ozturk vehemently denied any link to the attempted coup in his address to the court.
He described how he devoted his life to the Turkish military and said the charges were “unfair accusations”. “These accusations are for me the greatest punishment,” he said.
“The commanders who have fostered me, and my army friends, know well that I played no part in this treacherous coup attempt. In fact, I had no idea.”
The trial is one of many being held across the country to judge the coup suspects in what is the biggest legal process of Turkey’s modern history. More than 47,000 people have been arrested on suspicion of links to the Gulen movement in an unprecedented crackdown under the country’s state of emergency.
Tens of thousands of teachers, lecturers, judges, police officers and government employees have since been dismissed from them jobs, accused of sympathy for Mr Gulen, whom Ankara is trying to extradite.