Turkey culls nearly 1,400 from army in large-scale crackdown

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey dismissed nearly 1,400 more members of its armed forces and stacked the top military council with government ministers on Sunday, July 31, moves designed by President Tayyip Erdogan to put him in full control of the military after a failed coup, Reuters reports.

The scale of Erdogan's crackdown - more than 60,000 people in the military, judiciary, civil service and schools have been either detained, suspended or placed under investigation since the July 15-16 coup - has unnerved Turkey's NATO allies, fuelling tension between Ankara and the West.

Adding to the acrimony, Turkey's EU Affairs minister hit out at Germany on Sunday after its constitutional court upheld a ban on Erdogan making a televised address to a rally of pro-government Turks in Cologne.

The new wave of army expulsions and the overhaul of the Supreme Military Council (YAS) were announced in the official state gazette just hours after Erdogan said late on Saturday he planned to shut down existing military academies and put the armed forces under the command of the Defence Ministry.

According to the gazette, 1,389 military personnel were dismissed for suspected links to the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of orchestrating the failed putsch. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has denied the charges and condemned the coup.

It comes after an announcement last week that more than 1,700 military personnel had been dishonourably discharged for their role in the putsch, which saw a faction of the military commandeer tanks, helicopters and warplanes in an attempt to topple the government.

About 40 percent of Turkey's generals and admirals have been dismissed since the coup, in which Erdogan says 237 people excluding the plotters were killed and more than 2,100 wounded.

The government also said its deputy prime ministers and ministers of justice, the interior and foreign affairs would be appointed to YAS. The prime minister and defence minister were previously the only government representatives on the council.

They will replace a number of military commanders who have not been reappointed to the YAS, including the heads of the First, Second, and Third Armies, the Aegean Army and the head of the Gendarmerie security forces, which frequently battle Kurdish militants in the southeast. The changes appear to have given the government commanding control of the council.

Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture and possible death on the night of the coup, told Reuters in an interview on July 21 that the military, NATO's second-biggest, needed "fresh blood".