{"id":410,"date":"2014-06-28T20:34:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-28T20:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=410"},"modified":"2014-06-29T21:06:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-29T21:06:54","slug":"of-generals-judges-and-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"Of Generals, Judges and Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Economist<\/em> (From the print edition: Europe)<\/p>\n

Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks backing from all quarters for his presidential bid<\/strong><\/p>\n

THAT long-awaited \u201cwe told you so\u201d moment arrived on June 18th for Dani Rodrik, an economist at Princeton University, and his wife Pinar Dogan. An Istanbul court ordered the release of 230 people, mostly army officers convicted of trying to overthrow the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Justice and Development (AK) government. Among them was Cetin Dogan, a retired general and Mr Rodrik\u2019s father-in-law, sentenced in the \u201cSledgehammer\u201d case.<\/p>\n

Mr Rodrik and his wife have campaigned hard to prove that much of the case, in which the generals supposedly planned to bomb mosques during Friday prayers and shoot down Greek fighters to justify a coup, rested on bogus digital evidence. Forensic experts concurred, in 25 separate reports. The constitutional court duly called for a retrial because the prosecution\u2019s case was flawed and key defence witnesses were not allowed to testify, and the Istanbul court released the suspects.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>
In celebration of liberty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Coincidentally on the same day, an Ankara court sentenced Kenan Evren, a 96-year-old general and former president who led a violent coup in 1980, to life imprisonment. The same verdict was handed down to Tahsin Sahinkaya, the other surviving coup plotter. Thus a gross injustice was righted and a long-overdue punishment meted out. General Dogan celebrated. But, as Mr Rodrik tweeted, Mr Erdogan seems in effect to be saying \u201cI can put you in jail and I can let you out. This is democracy.\u201d Many believe that, just as the Sledgehammer convictions were political, so was the constitutional court\u2019s call for a retrial.<\/p>\n

The first was about settling scores with the generals; the second, as an AK official says, was \u201cabout poking Fethullah Gulen in the eye.\u201d He is referring to the Pennsylvania-based Sunni cleric, an ally in the battle against the army who has since fallen out with the prime minister. Mr Erdogan now calls Mr Gulen and his flock \u201cterrorists\u201d. Judges and prosecutors involved in the Sledgehammer case, and the similar Ergenekon trials, have been purged or demoted, along with thousands of bureaucrats and security officials seen as Gulenists. Mr Erdogan has gone global, getting Azerbaijan to shut Gulenist schools and even asking America to extradite Mr Gulen.<\/p>\n

Mr Erdogan\u2019s courtship of the army (and of the Kurds) also furthers his hopes of becoming Turkey\u2019s first popularly elected president in August. The army was plotting coups as recently as 2007 when, in a statement on its website, it threatened to intervene over the presidency. If Mr Erdogan really wanted to bolster civilian control of the army, he would get the chief of the general staff to report to the defence minister, have the army\u2019s books audited and change the constitution the army wrote in 1982.<\/p>\n

Rumblings of discontent are growing within Islamic intellectual circles. Corruption allegations against Mr Erdogan\u2019s relatives, business cronies and fellow AK members suggest they are no different from their secular rivals, some say. Many are horrified by a claim by Hayrettin Karaman, an Islamic academic, in the daily Yeni Safak, an AK party mouthpiece, that it is admissible for businessmen to be \u201casked\u201d to donate a portion of their profit from government contracts to charitable foundations. Mr Erdogan\u2019s younger son Bilal runs a charitable foundation referred to in the scandal, though he denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Liberals who were among Mr Erdogan\u2019s staunchest supporters are also disillusioned. Anti-government journalists continue to be sacked at his behest. Prosecutors want a long jail sentence for a 13-year-old boy accused of taking part in a protest against the deaths of 300 people in the Soma mine explosion in May. This week Turkey\u2019s central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates by 0.75 percentage points, seemingly to please Mr Erdogan and despite its supposedly independent status.<\/p>\n

General Evren\u2019s conviction is a milestone. Yet a huge majority of Turks welcomed his 1980 coup, because it ended street battles between left-wing and right-wing activists that were claiming thousands of lives. Today\u2019s Turkey is richer and a lot calmer. But as Mr Erdogan looks ahead to the presidential race, he might do well to remember that the greatest leaders have worked with critics and opponents as well as their natural base of support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist (From the print edition: Europe) Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks backing from all quarters for his presidential bid THAT long-awaited \u201cwe told you so\u201d [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}