PM Erdoğan actively supported Gen. Başbuğ yesterday and today. Mr. Erdoğan was very offended by today’s Taraf headline: "His Pasha’s Prime Minister". He is probably just too happy to be seen as an ally of the army now. Establishment journalists today worked hard to attack Taraf.
To the chief of staff
Where do you get the courage to speak so recklessly, so impolitely and so threateningly? Do you even hear what you are saying?
Who are you trying to scare? Do you really believe you can scare us? Let me tell you something in a friendly manner, general, please stop making such threats, such gestures full of hatred and anger. These do not scare us. Don’t you understand that some people will do anything to make their country a happy and free one? Please try to understand this and abandon these efforts to frighten us.
The general’s fury and the country’s realities
In this country, the military has always regarded itself as free from accountability and free from criticism, which has become quite a primitive and evil habit, mostly thanks to civilians.
Başbuğ ire draws reaction from media
| At a hastily arranged press conference in the western province of Balıkesir on Tuesday, Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ lashed out at the media, mainly the liberal daily Taraf, for publishing confidential information revealing that the army had known in advance about a deadly attack on the Aktütün outpost on Oct. 3, which left 17 soldiers dead. |
Beyond anger, confrontation
The burst of rage of the chief of general staff, Gen. Ilker Başbuğ, was followed by a ban of publication of all stories relating to the Oct. 14 and 15 newspaper reports from Taraf on the attack against the Aktütün military outpost earlier this month.
The question of ‘standing on the right side’
Not even generals at times of military rule had the harshness that Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ exhibited yesterday during his speech addressing the press.
Even housewives are responding
Turkey is no longer the same old Turkey. Factors such as the development of communication technology, an increase in literacy rates and opening up to the rest of the world have changed society such that people no longer blindly accept what those in positions of power say.
The first casualty
Tension between the army and the media ratcheted up a notch as the chief of general staff condemned journalists and informants who had claimed that intelligence on an imminent outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attack on the Aktütün border post had been ignored.
Demand for extraordinary power
The attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on the Aktütün military outpost has rekindled the debate over how the Kurdish issue should be handled. It is quite ironic that we assert that the PKK is not or should not be a decisive factor in this issue, but do not discuss it until after an attack by the PKK.
Turkish army condemns media claims
Turkey’s military chief lashed out at the media after a newspaper published leaked documents and claimed army failings had contributed to the deaths of 17 soldiers in a clash with Kurdish rebels
Torture and apology
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which has been trying to govern Turkey, a difficult country, since 2002, has set two "zero" targets for itself: zero disputes with neighbors and zero tolerance for torture.
Turkey’s anti-terrorism strategy under revision (SETimes.com)
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