Word: erdogan
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...high-ranking military officers on Feb. 24 for their alleged roles in a 2003 coup plot. These arrests came two days after as many as 50 former and current military officials were detained as suspected conspirators. Those not charged remained in custody for further questioning. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denied that the arrests were motivated by tension between the Islamist-leaning administration and the secular military. Two trials from previous rounds of arrests related to the purported coup are still in progress...
...world is fast changing and so, too, is Turkey. For the past eight years, a power struggle has been waged in Turkey between the secular establishment - backed by the military - and the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But although tension has always existed between the two sides, an uneasy truce has kept it in check - until now. On Monday, the country awoke to the seismic news that 49 active and retired military officers, including generals and colonels, had been rounded up in dawn raids and taken in for questioning over...
...arrests are being seen as a critical test of how far the government can go in reining in the military's power - a goal of Erdogan's party for years. After it came into power, for instance, the party started using European Union-inspired reforms to pave the way for civilian courts to try military staff. The government has also backed a two-year court investigation into allegations that a bizarre alliance of military men, mafia bosses and secularists sought to create social upheaval by plotting to plant bombs and stage assassinations - all as a pretext for military intervention. Monday...
...Turkey has remained calm this week. Although the army's chief of staff, Ilker Basbug, denounced the allegations, he also held meetings with Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul to discuss the arrests and said coups "are a thing of the past." The country's generals have also all returned to their posts without incident. "If 49 people at the head of Turkey's founding institution can become the object of an investigation, this means Turkey has crossed a historic threshold," says Cengiz Candar, a political commentator for the Radikal newspaper in Istanbul. "This is a catharsis...
...situation is further complicated by questions surrounding the motivations of the AKP. Erdogan has yet to answer critics who say that the government's two-year investigation into the other suspected plotters is partially aimed at settling old political scores against secularist journalists and government opponents who have been rounded up in recent months. "This government has done nothing in the name of democratization except to rein in the military. That's why I see this process not as one of democratization but of substituting military tutelage with a form of civilian tutelage," says Cuneyt Ulsever, a liberal columnist...