Turkey tries to ‘repair’ image in outside world

Soldiers tell tales of exile

ANKARA, Turkey, March 11, (AP): On a mission to rehabilitate its image, Turkey is instead inching closer to being an outcast among Western nations that seem to understand their NATO ally less and less each day.

Eight months after a failed coup shattered its delicate status quo, Turkey is mounting a concerted but thus far futile campaign to convince the outside world that the horrors of that day justify both its post-coup crackdown and a referendum on strengthening presidential powers. So too has Turkey been unable to convince the US that the shadowy, exiled cleric it blames for the coup attempt is culpable and must be extradited.

Squeezed between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey has sought to project an image of a modern democracy that serves as a bulwark against the extremism menacing so many of its Mideast neighbors. Yet a series of self-defeating steps are telling reminders of how wide a gulf still separates Turkey from the Western world.

“I’m not saying that we’re perfect. We’re not. I’m not saying that mistakes aren’t being made,” said Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek. But he said the outside world must “at least try to understand the traumatic experience that Turkey has been going through.”

This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed to stoke tensions further when he accused Germany of “Nazi practices” after Turkish leaders had been prevented from rallying expats in several Germany cities in support of the referendum. Many in Europe worry that Erdogan is capitalizing on post-coup fears to push through a more authoritarian system with few checks on his power.

Simsek

Pivotal

For the West, there are real risks if Turkey feels estranged and mistreated. The country is pivotal to resolving the unrelenting civil war in neighboring Syria, where Turkey and the US are at a logjam over Turkey’s distrust of the Syrian Kurdish fighters the US is relying on to fight the Islamic State group. And though Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has lost momentum, Turkey holds major leverage by way of its deal with the EU to stem the flow of refugees into Europe, which Turkey has threatened to scuttle.

Turkey’s inability to make its case to the West effectively was displayed this week in the capital, Ankara, whose mayor invited a group of American journalists to interview Erdogan and other top officials, including Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief and military commander.

After flying to Turkey, the journalists discovered there were no interviews arranged with those officials. Instead, they spoke with other officials, including the mayor, Melih Gokcek, a member of Erdogan’s party. He screened graphic videos aiming to reinforce how traumatic the coup attempt had been. Then he offered unfounded conspiracy theories that the US created the Islamic State group and that the US and Israel colluded to artificially trigger an earthquake in Turkey so they could capture energy from the fault line.

Underlying Turkey’s strategy to explain itself to the West is an apparent belief that its case is most convincing when couched in bedrock Western principles, regardless of whether the appeals to those principles seem credible.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, who also met with the visiting group, claimed no journalists in Turkey are in prison for doing journalism, even though scores have been arrested. Since the failed coup, at least 100 news outlets have been forcibly closed in a clampdown Human Rights Watch says has “all but silenced independent media.” Yet Bozdag insisted any journalists in prison were there for drugs, trespassing or for “propagandizing for terrorist organizations.”

Turkish leaders have expressed exasperation that they are lambasted for the steps they took after the coup while France gets a “pass” for the state of emergency imposed after the 2015 Paris attacks. But France — unlike Turkey — didn’t arrest 41,000 people and purge 100,000 from its civil service.

Likewise, Turkey has sought to appeal to Americans’ own experiences with terrorism by repeatedly comparing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric Turkey says plotted the coup. Gulen, living in exile in Pennsylvania, denies involvement.

Although Turkey says it has provided roughly a half million pieces of evidence to support its extradition request, the US remains unconvinced. What little evidence Turkey has made public has been mostly anecdotes about arrested military members confessing loyalty to Gulen’s movement.

Aykan Erdemir, a former member of Turkey’s parliament, said there are frequent and ineffective efforts taking place in Western cities and in Turkey to burnish Turkey’s image, often comprising poorly planned presentations alleging Gulen’s guilt. But Erdermir said the West isn’t the only intended audience.

Because Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party once had close ties to Gulen’s group, the party’s leaders are vulnerable to being implicated if the post-coup crackdown moves higher up the power structure, Erdemir said.

Purged Turkish officers tell tales of exile:

In the days after rogue soldiers tried to take over Turkey last year, the fax machine in the Turkish delegation’s offices at NATO headquarters started spitting out lists of names.

The lists from armed forces headquarters in Ankara often arrived on Friday evenings as personnel were packing up for the weekend, which seemed odd. Each carried 20 or 30 names at first.

But the one that came through more than two months after the July coup attempt stunned even seasoned Turkish officers in Belgium.

It gave 221 colonels, majors and other mid-ranking officers at NATO facilities around the world three days to get back to Turkey.

“Normally you would be told where you are going on your next assignment, get an allowance to move your family, have some time for your children to leave school,” one major who appeared on the Sept. 27 list told The Associated Press. “It didn’t make any sense.”

Now considered coup suspects, dozens of Turkish officers assigned to NATO are refusing orders from the country they spent their adult lives serving and no longer trust. Instead, they are seeking asylum abroad or have gone into hiding, fearing arrest and imprisonment as terrorists if they return.

More than 150,000 people have been taken into custody, fired or forced to retire from Turkey’s armed forces, judiciary, education system and other institutions since the thwarted July 15 coup. Few first-person accounts have emerged, in part because the crackdown has hit news outlets in Turkey.