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Turkey: General insists army has role in politics

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  • Turkey: General insists army has role in politics

    The Guardian (London) - Final Edition
    September 27, 2006 Wednesday

    Turkey: General insists army has role in politics

    Ian Traynor


    A leading Turkish general issued a stinging attack on the
    centre-right government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan by warning that the
    danger of Islamism in the country was reaching "alarming" levels.

    Defying EU demands for the military to keep out of politics, General
    Ilker Basbug, chief of land forces, warned the Erdogan government
    that the top brass still saw itself as the ultimate arbiter of
    Turkey's secularist constitution.

    "The Turkish armed forces have always taken sides and will continue
    to do so in protecting the national state, the unitary state and the
    secular state," he told a ceremony for cadets at a military academy
    in Ankara. Islamists were "patiently and systematically" seeking to
    erode the secularist order.

    The robust defence of the military's role in Turkish politics is
    certain to affect an EU assessment of Turkey's bid to eventually join
    the EU.

    The European commission is to issue a report card on Turkey in
    November, delayed from next month, and is concerned about curbs on
    freedom of expression, persecution of the large Kurdish minority and
    the military's interference in democratic politics, as well as
    Turkey's dispute with the EU members Greece and Cyprus over trade.

    Other incidents yesterday showed Turkey ignoring EU criticism,
    suggesting a rise in hostility ahead of elections next year.

    Prosecutors filed new charges against the Turkish Armenian editor
    Hrant Dink for "denigrating Turkishness", an article in the penal
    code used to muzzle writers and journalists and which Brussels wants
    scrapped.

    In the largest Kurdish city in Turkey, Diyarbakir, the state put 56
    Kurdish mayors on trial for appealing to Denmark to allow a Kurdish
    exile television station to keep broadcasting.
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