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Dozens of suspects accused of trying to assassinate the Turkish president during last years botched coup attempt will remain in jail pending their trial and have been denied bail, a court in southwestern Turkey ruled yesterday.

44 members of the military squad involved in the plot who are believed to have been ordered to capture or kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were previously remanded in custody to face trial.

The Second Heavy Penal Court in Mugla also decided that Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is also Erdogans son-in-law, can join the trial as a plaintiff.

Last year, on 15 July, in the midst of the coup attempt, Erdogan told the nation on live television that he had narrowly escaped an attempt on his life when the hotel in Marmaris where he had been staying was bombed only 15 minutes after he left.

Turkey survived a deadly coup attempt on 15 July by rogue elements within the military that killed 249 people and injured nearly 2,200 others.

Responding to a rallying cry by Erdogan, Turkish citizens valiantly took to the streets that night and became the biggest factor in ensuring the failure of the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected government.

Turkeys government has repeatedly said the coup attempt was organized by US-based preacher Fetullah Gulen and what the Turkish government now terms as the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation, or FETO.

Gulen is accused of a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.

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Failed Erdogan assassins to stay in jail - Middle East Monitor

Suddenly the world is full of leaders from Theresa May to President Erdogan of Turkey claiming to unite their countries while visibly deepening their divisions. Denunciations of supposed threats at home and abroad are a common feature of this new political style, whether they are tweeted from the White House or spoken at the podium outside 10 Downing Street.

Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials, said May this week, accusing them of deliberately trying to influence the results of the general election on 8 June. All this sounded very like Hillary Clinton convinced that Russia helped lose her the presidential election, though in the case of Britain any such calculation is highly unlikely given the common European assumption that Mrs May is going to win a landslide victory.

Defending the motherland against the evil schemes of foreigners is a political gambit that has been played out countless times since the age of Pericles, but its impact depends on the political context in which it is used. At the moment, it is peculiarly destructive as ethnic nationalism reasserts itself as a vehicle for grievances and rivalry between different nation states is reaching new heights. Populist nationalist leaders from Manilla to Warsaw to Washington are promising more than they can deliver and looking for scapegoats at home and abroad to blame when things go wrong. Nationalism has always needed real or invented threats to super-charge communal solidarity.

In an age of reinvigorated nation states, English nationalism is more dangerous than it looks. It displaces a vaguer and more inclusive British nationalism, dislocating Englands relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland. It may well be that Scotland will not become independent or Northern Ireland unite with the Irish Republic, but these options are already feasible enough to preoccupythe British state.

Theresa May's full statement marking the dissolution of Parliament

One destructive element in English nationalism is seldom identified. People in England understandably resent the way that their nationalism, which they see as merely sticking up for their own interests, is condemned as racist and jingoistic when Scottish and Irish nationalism (or for that matter Algerian and Vietnamese nationalism) are given a free passas the laudable pursuit of liberty and self-determination.

There is something in this, but there is a difference between the nationalism of weak countries, whose history is one of foreign conquest and occupation, and the nationalism of larger and stronger ones who did the conquering and the occupying. Smaller countries or embattled communities always play with a weaker hand of political cards than their opponents and cannot do what they like, but this has the advantage of giving them a good grasp of the realities of power.

But states like the US, Britain, France and Russia who have an imperial past or present,have a much less accurate sense of what is feasible and what is not. Their nationalism is coloured by self-justifying myths about their own superiority and the inferiority of others. This is not just distasteful but carries the seeds of frustration and defeat. The British empire fatally underestimating the resistance of Afghans and Boers in the 19th century and the Irish, Indians and Greek Cypriots, among others, in the 20th century.

One could see the same self-destructive arrogance at work more recently in Iraq after 2003 and in Afghanistan after 2006. Public opinion at home never took on board the extent of British failure there was more complete than that of the Americans. In Iraq, the British force ended up signing a humiliating agreement with a Shia militia. No lessons were learned from defeat, as witness Boris Johnsons glib promise to join the US in attacking President Assad.

Much of this sabre-rattling over the last week is simply part of Britains long-standing effort since 1940 to demonstrate its continuing usefulness as the main foreign ally of the US. But here again the political landscape is changing in a way not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. US international leadership under Donald Trump is mercurial and unpredictable and Britain needs to rethink its policies in the Middle East according to a report by the House of Lords international relations select committee this week. Its chairman, the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howell, says that in a world less automatically dominated by the US underpinning security in the region, it is no longer right to have a stance at every stage of if we just get on with the US everything will be alright.

This is all very true, but does not answer questions about whether or not Britain, if it does not piggy-back on US military power, has the inclination and resources to play a more independent role.

There are other doubts about how far British power and influence will survive post-Brexit. Not many Leave voters will have truly believed in Shakespearean rhapsodies about England as a precious stone set in the silver sea.But the proponents of Brexit were always cavalier about where Britain outside the EU would stand in a world which is getting more unstable. Appeals of varying degrees of sophistication to the spirit of 1940forget that British victory in the Napoleonic wars and both World Wars depended on the Royal Navy and on building up a network of alliances with other powers. Having spurned the EU, this latter strategy is going to be very difficult to pursue. Already May, Johnson and assorted royals have been scurrying off to see unsavoury allies in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and among the kleptocratic monarchs of the Gulf.

One aspect of British decline is underrated: people favouring or opposing Brexit both speak in the future tense about the benefits or disasters that will ensue as Britain negotiates its departure. But one of the worst consequences of the decision is already with us and is simply that the British Government is wholly focused on Brexit to the exclusion of everything else.

Mrs Mays explanation that she called the general election to strengthen her hand in negotiating with Brussels is an admission of the dominance of the issue. There is not going to be much time to consider new policies for a changing Middle East or for anything else.

How did all this happen? In many respects, globalisation has turned out to be more destructive to the status quo than communism everwas. In its name,nationalism was discarded and derided by ruling elites who had an economically respectable reason to distance themselves from the rest of society and did not see that they were cutting through the branch on which they were sitting. The left never much liked nationalism, suspecting it of being a mask for racism and a diversion from more important social and economic issues. Populist nationalists came to power in country after country as others retreated from nationalism and they filled the vacuum.

The enhanced rivalry of nation states will be more destructive and violent than what went before. It is not just because of Donald Trump that the whole the world is becoming more mercurial and unstable. Everywhere divisive leaders are proposing radical changes that will exacerbate divisions.

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World leaders from May to Trump to Erdogan are all promising to unite their countries while doing the exact opposite - The Independent

ISTANBUL The scenes of Turkeys bloody and abortive military coup last July still scar Uskudar, an old waterside district of Istanbul that was a deadly front of violence that night and remains, nearly a year later, a wellspring of the nations rage.

Residents nervously recall the armored vehicles that appeared thatnight, the rattle of gunfire and the snarling of motorcycles whisking the wounded to the hospital. At least 13 people from Uskudar were killed during the attempted coup, a cataclysm in Turkey that left more than 200 people dead, an anxious country betrayed and the government consumed with a vigorous hunt for it enemies.

So it came as some surprise last month when the residents of Uskudar voted to defeat a measurethat gave the president greater powers rejecting a set of constitutional changes that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies had pitched to the country as a patriotic response to the treachery in July. ThatErdogan has a house in Uskudar and votes in the district made it all the more surprising.

The presidents resolute loyalists ultimately propelled him to anationwide victory in the referendum, as they have time and again in votes since 2002, defiantly rejecting criticism that the changes doomed Turkey to one-man rule. But thenarrow win and the defeat of the measure in places such as Uskudar, as well as in Turkeys three largest cities, has also prompted an unusual degree ofintrospection among some supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and even a hint of dissent.

In interviews with supporters of the party in Uskudar and elsewhere, there was an acknowledgment that voters had delivered the AKP a message, although its meaning was disputed. Erdogans most hardcore advocates brushed off the losses in big cities, insisting that the slim margin was due to campaign blundersor the obdurate views of opposition party voters.

Others, though, conceded that the vote had aggravated unsustainable societal divisions in Turkey. And in more damning, albeit guarded, critiques, the party was accused of arrogance and thegovernment of being fixated onits purge of enemies, which for some had gone too far.

Melih Ecertas, the 30-year-old national youth leader of the AKP, who splits his time between Uskudar and Ankara, the capital, said the partys no voters fell into roughly two camps. They included a cohort loyal to elder statesmen in the party who had been shunted from Erdogans inner circle over the past few years and who had remained noticeably silent during the governments all-out effort to pass the constitutional changes.

[Inside a nervous Turkish newsroom as the government closes in]

Then there were those who questioned why the party, given its success, felt compelled to pursue such a drastic transformation in Turkeys system of governance.

They say, Why the change? We are powerful, Ecertas said.

In one subtle but high-profile complaint, Abdullah Gul, a founder of the AKP and Turkeys former president, on Thursday broke the relative silence he had maintained during the referendum campaign and called for a comprehensive reform process in Turkey.It was ostensibly a response to a decision by a leading European human rights body to begin monitoring Turkey for the first time in more than a decade. But Gul also appeared to be drawing a contrast between his partys earlier era when he was a key figure and the present.

Reform, he said, will bring democracy, law and human rights standards closer to universal criteria by rapidly expelling the psychological trauma created by the treacherous July 15 coup.

Growing up with Erdogan

Ecertas, the youth leader, was one of the AKPs most tireless advocates in the run-up to the referendum, shepherding a direct-mail campaignto young Turks that he said reached more than 14 million voters.He used PowerPoint slides and handouts to argue the merits of the constitutional amendments to journalists changes that converted Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system and brought the country critically needed stability, he said.

Ecertas was among a generation first drawn to politics in the 1990s as Erdogan rose to prominence, revered for his charisma and his vows to champion the values of conservative Muslims in Turkeys largely secular public sphere.

My father admired him a lot, said Ecertas, who was 7 when Erdogan became the mayor of Istanbul. All of Turkey admired Erdogan.

Ecertas attended religious schools in Istanbul and Emerson College in Boston as a Fulbright scholar. After university, he formally joined the AKP in 2011, seeingthe party as a force for change not just an Islamist movement advocating for conservatives such as himself, but a challenger to Turkeys ossified politics and a modernizing force.

The referendum victory was the culmination of the partys struggles. The day of the vote, he said, is the day we changed the system, that once forbade religious schools, the Koran. The system will never allow anyone to do anything that the Turkish population doesnt want.

Asked about the defeat of the referendum measure in places such as Uskudar and the AKP members who voted against the party Ecertas said it wasimportant to acknowledge and understand all of the no voters.

Not good for the country

The AKP seems more likely to plot a path toward victory in the next elections, rather than reflect on the complaints of disaffected supporters, according to Fehmi Koru, a journalist who is close to senior AKP figures and said he had voted with the party since it came to power.

Koru, who has known Abdullah Gul since the two participated in a religious youth movement together, said that when the AKP came to power in 2002, it was very much interested in making the country more free, he said. The government served the people, he added, saying that people who voted for the AKP like me voted with a clear conscience.

His disappointment had grown over thepast five years because of Turkeys economic problems, the governments foreign policy decisions and the feeling that, increasingly, Turkey was not a united country. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, his journalist friends were imprisoned as the government widened a crackdown beyond the followers ofFethullah Gulen, anexiled Turkish cleric the authorities accuse of orchestrating the unsuccessful attempt to take over the government.

Cracks were visible in the relationshipbetween Turks and the AKP-led government, Koru said. When people look at them, they dont say they are very modest and alleviate the peoples problems. How do I say this they are too sure of themselves, he said.

He voted against the referendum measure partly because a parliamentary system was more in line with Turkeys history, he said, but also because it was a radical change that appeared designed to serve Erdogan.The president, he said, loves the people, and the people love him.But Turkey would be stuck with the changes after Erdogan left the scene.

This is not good for the country, he said.

Sharpened battle lines

For some AKP supporters in Uskudar, acknowledging Turkeys malaise did not mean a loss of faith in the president. In shops that stood empty because of the struggling economy, among residents frustrated with a lack of municipal services, there was a conviction that Erdogan would persevere.

The presidentis very clever, said Selen Ulustu, 40, who runs a beauty supplies store. Thats why he is the winner.

More importantly, she said, the referendum had clarified a struggle between observant Muslims like her, whose frame of reference was Turkeys Ottoman history, and Erdogans opponents, for whom history began with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,the founder of Turkeys modern secular republic.The coup attempt had only sharpened the battle lines.

There are some people who are not aware of its seriousness, said Ulustu, adding that she had reported at least eight members of her family to the authorities for being suspected Gulenists.

Down the street from her shop, Huda Ozdemir, 24, who attended university in Uskudar and said she came from a conservative Muslim family, was the kind of voter whom the AKP might have reliably courted in the past.

But she balked at thepresidents accumulation of power, at the level of nationalism during the campaign and at what she called the rhetoric of victimhood that the AKP had created in the name of defending conservative women like her.

Shevoted no. And she persuaded her 20-year-old sister, once a determined AKP supporter, to do the same.

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As Turkey's Erdogan savors new powers, there are whispers of dissent among his loyalists - Washington Post

Published time: 2 May, 2017 13:50 Edited time: 3 May, 2017 09:45

Turkey will say goodbye to the EU if it refuses to open new chapters on its accession into the bloc, President Erdogan has stated. It comes after an EU commissioner said Ankaras actions and policies have made it impossible to meet EU criteria to join.

From now on there is no option other than opening the chapters you have not yet opened. If you do not open [them], goodbye, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a Tuesday ceremony to mark his return to the ruling AK Party, as quoted by Reuters.

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His comments came after European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids, told Reuters that Turkeys limits on press freedom, mass jailing, and diminishing civil rights have made it almost impossible for Turkey to meet EU joining criteria.

Hahn said on Tuesday that EU rules are not negotiable, and that the bloc will not put aside the human rights situation in discussions with Ankara.

Everybodys clear that, currently at least, Turkey is moving away from a European perspective, Hahn said.

There is no version of Turkish democracy. There is only democracy. Turkish people have the same rights to live in freedom as Europeans do.

He stated that the focus of the relationship between the bloc and Ankara has to be something else we have to see what could be done in the future, to see if we can restart some kind of cooperation.

Ankara and Brussels have been in talks for years over the possibility of Turkey joining the EU. The already slow negotiations were stalled even further following Erdogans sweeping crackdown after a failed coup in July 2016.

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Relations have since become even more strained following last months referendum results, which allow Erdogan to be granted sweeping powers when it comes to national matters of legislation, finance, appointments, and civil society. The European Commission has called for an investigation into alleged voting irregularities.

Last year, Ankara agreed to a landmark migrant deal with the bloc which would see it take back all illegal migrants landing in Greece from its shores, in exchange for accelerated talks on becoming a member of the bloc and billions in refugee assistance from the EU.

Turkey also rallied for visa-free travel to Europes Schengen zone as part of the deal, but was told by the EU that a list of 72 conditions must first be met a key sticking point of which is Turkeys strict anti-terrorism laws, which Europe has said must be loosened in order for that agreement to go ahead.

Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to destroy the deal if Brussels does not hold up its end of the agreement, a move which could see Europe once again struggling to deal with an overwhelming influx of refugees.

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Erdogan threatens to say goodbye to EU as official warns ...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began his first 100 days last week as head of Turkeys new regime by reverting to membership in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). He is now set to be re-elected as chairman on the 21st of this month.

Once this happens he will no longer be the theoretical president of all the Turks but, in practice, president of the AKPs conservative, devout constituency constituting half the populace. This is certain to further alienate the already alienated liberal, secular 50 per cent of Turks.

Under the unamended constitution, the Turkish president was meant to be a neutral, largely ceremonial figure. However, as soon as he was inaugurated in August 2014, after serving for 11 years as prime minister, Erdogan usurped the powers of his previous office, with the backing of his majority parliamentary party.

Although his 18 amendments were approved by a narrow margin 51.4 per cent in the April 16th referendum Erdogans return to the AKP has demonstrated he intends to move ahead with his drive to remodel the post-Ottoman, Western-style Turkish state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk in 1923. Atatrk adopted aggressive lacit and the parliamentary system of governance, appointed the military guarantor of this polity, and decreed all inhabitants of the new state to be Turks. Over the decades Turkey developed checks and balances for the executive, legislature and judiciary.

After becoming prime minister in 2003, Erdogan adopted Atatrks pro-Western external orientation by pursuing Turkeys accession to the European Union (EU). On the internal front he began to erode his countrys secularism by actively promoting religious schools, lifting the ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions, and attempting to criminalise adultery and introduce alcohol-free zones. He criticised birth control and argued men and women are not equal.

He was able to promote his agenda because the AKP, modelled on the Muslim Brotherhood, dominated the political landscape and could count on maintaining its majority in parliament thanks to weakness and division among secular rivals. The AKPs control of parliament removed the legislature as a check on Erdogans ambitions. In 2013, following allegations of AKP corruption, Erdogan began to purge the judiciary, which he escalated dramatically last year after the failed mid-July military coup which was followed by mass arrests and dismissals of judges, prosecutors, and police.

Erdogan also purged the military in stages, beginning in 2007 with allegations of a coup plot by secular nationalists in the armed forces command and peaking after the failed 2016 coup. The military no longer has the power to act as guarantor of Atatrks state.

Since the AKP is heir to three fundamentalist parties National Salvation, Welfare, and Virtue and denied power by the military, Erdogan had no intention of permitting the generals to intervene again.

The constitutional amendments transform Turkeys parliamentary system into a presidential model by abolishing the role of prime minister and conferring on the president sweeping executive powers. He not only exercises authority over the legislature but is also empowered to draw up the state budget and appoint cabinet ministers, members of the National Security Council and 12 out of 15 judges to the constitutional court. Prosecutors and lower court judges are to be chosen by parliament and president. Checks and balances have been eliminated.

Erdogan could reign until 2029, enabling him to advance the replacement of Atatrks secular model with a faith-based system featuring conservative Sunni tenets and social practices. He claims his aim is to revert to the Ottoman model, has adopted the pomp and circumstance of the Ottoman court, and is often portrayed as a pasha in a turban and flowing garments.

He is, in fact, cherry-picking elements of the Ottoman regime, adopting some, eschewing others. The most important Ottoman practice he has rejected is toleration of multiple ethnicities, religious faiths, and cultures. Instead, he has embraced post-Ottoman, Kemalist ethnic Turkish nationalism which forced Greek and Armenian Christians to flee and angered the Kurds, 20 per cent of the population. For generations they have been dubbed mountain Turks, and their Indo-Aryan ethnic identity, language and culture have been suppressed, driving them to revolt.

Erdogans critics argue his referendum victory was undemocratic since opponents of his amendments were prevented from campaigning and the result was fraudulent due to the acceptance by the election commission of ballots without its authentication stamps. The opposition is strong in Turkeys three major cities Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir while Erdogans supporters live mainly in rural areas and provincial towns. The divide is largely between secular, urban Turks and devout, conservative, urban working class, small town and village Turks.

Reliance on his constituency without conciliating opponents could lead to demonstrations in Turkeys cities similar to the countrywide protests in 2013 sparked by Ankaras decision to build a mosque and mall in Istanbuls Gezi park, the citys greenzone. Protesters demonstrated against corruption, limitations on press freedom, destruction of the environment, and Erdogans erosion of secularism.

Despite his harsh crackdown on domestic dissent, Erdogan remains vulnerable. In 2015 he rekindled the 30-year war against the Kurds after nearly two years of ceasefire and negotiations. His promotion of war in Syria by facilitating the movement of foreign fighters and arms across Turkey into Syria, and supporting Muslim Brotherhood-linked expatriate Syrian oppositionists, has backfired.

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have taken over from moderate rebels, prospered in Syria and Iraq, formed cells in Turkeys towns and cities and carried out bombings in Ankara and Istanbul. The Turkish army has been drawn into the Syrian conflict. Jihadis have infiltrated Europe via Turkey and mounted operations in Belgium and France. Radical recruiters have inspired attacks elsewhere in Europe.

Turkeys relations with the US, EU and Nato have been damaged. Erdogans first post-referendum journey was to India, where he was warmly welcomed by Hindu revivalist Narendra Modi. Erdogan will shortly meet his US counterpart Donald Trump who has made a practice of inviting to the White House authoritarian rulers, shunned by his predecessor.

Michael Jansen is based in Cyprus and writes for The Irish Times about the Middle East

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Erdogan remains vulnerable despite power grab - Irish Times