TURKEY: 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, Gen Ilker Basbug, the 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 eventually to 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 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.
Meanwhile, 56 Kurdish mayors went on trial yesterday over a letter they sent to Denmark's prime minister in a case that has raised concerns in the EU.
The mayors from Turkey's largest Kurdish party are charged by state prosecutors with "knowingly and willingly" helping Kurdish rebels when they urged prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen not to close Danish-based Kurdish broadcaster Roj TV.
The members of the Democratic Society Party, which champions Kurdish rights, each face up to 15 years in jail if convicted. The criminal court judge adjourned the trial until November 21st.
"The problem [Kurdish rights] cannot be solved by closing Roj TV which has been forced to broadcast from Denmark," said Yenisehir mayor Firat Anli in a defence statement on behalf of the mayors.