Tag Archives: Turkey

Turkey could put EU talks to a referendum next year

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, October 26, 2016.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey could hold a referendum on whether to continue membership talks with the European Union next year, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, and repeated his warning to Brussels that it needed to “make up its mind” on Turkish accession.

European Union foreign ministers were meeting on Monday to consider shelving membership talks with Turkey over what they see as its lurch away from democracy after a failed coup in July, although there is no consensus for such a move.

In a speech in Ankara broadcast live on television, Erdogan urged Turks to be patient until the end of the year and then said a vote could be held on EU membership.

“Let’s wait until the end of the year and then go to the people. Let’s go to the people since they will make the final call. Even Britain went to the people. Britain said ‘let’s exit’, and they left,” Erdogan said.

He lambasted European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who said this month the detention of opposition politicians and the extent of post-coup purges “call into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between the EU and Turkey”.

“What are you? Since when do you have the authority to decide for Turkey? How can you, who have not taken Turkey into the EU for 53 years, find the authority to make such a decision?” Erdogan said.

“This people makes its own decisions, cuts its own umbilical cord,” he said.

Erdogan also said he would approve reinstating the death penalty – a move that would likely end any hope of Turkish membership in the EU – if parliament passed a law on it, and said that too could be part of a referendum.

Turkey is expected to hold a national vote on constitutional changes next spring, including boosting the powers of Erdogan’s office to create a Turkish version of the presidential system in the United States or France.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and David Dolan)

Pressure growing in EU to halt Turkish membership talks but no decision yet

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a congress in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers will on Monday consider shelving membership talks with Turkey over what they see as its disturbing lurch away from democracy after a botched coup there, though there is no consensus for such a tough step yet.

Despite EU alarm at the scale of Ankara’s post-coup security crackdown, EU diplomats say they must keep talking to President Tayyip Erdogan to retain his crucial help in curbing migration to Europe and fighting Islamist militants in the Middle East.

But the fact that Austria, Luxembourg and some European lawmakers now openly call for suspending the Turkey talks marks a sea change in tone just eight months after the bloc promised Ankara the process would be sped up in exchange for its collaboration in reducing migration from its territory.

“Suspending membership talks with Turkey is not formally on the agenda but we expect some ministers to bring this up,” one EU official said of the 28 foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled in Brussels on Monday.

“It is true some deeply troubling things are happening in Turkey. But you have to ask yourself the question what exactly would we achieve by suspending the process now? How would that help? We need to keep communication channels open.”

An EU report this week accused Turkey of backsliding on its road to membership since the July coup attempt, since which Ankara has suspended, dismissed or arrested over 110,000 people including soldiers, judges, teachers, journalists and Kurdish leaders over alleged support of the putsch.

The EU’s top enlargement official said Turkey’s EU candidacy was now hanging in the balance.

“This is something that could happen,” one diplomat in Brussels said. “But not just yet, definitely not until EU leaders meet in December.”

Berlin, as well as several other EU capitals, have so far poured cold water on talk of aborting Turkey membership talks.

“COOL HEADS” NEEDED

“Yes, we have to be critical about developments in Turkey. But we also have to be cool-headed about it and not just jump in and get too much involved in criticizing Turkey’s domestic affairs,” another diplomat said.

“There is Turkey’s role in the region. But if we push too far we also risk being back to where we were last year on migration and it was tearing us apart.”

An EU-Turkey deal reached in March has cut to a trickle the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe via Greece from Turkish shores after more than a million arrivals last year.

It has been sharply criticized by rights groups for undercutting international humanitarian standards. But it has also given breathing space to EU leaders under increasing popular pressure at home for failing to control the influx and embroiled in rows among themselves over how to handle it.

Turkey has told the EU it will have to “live with the consequences” if it halts membership talks.

Ankara’s EU membership has always been a long shot. Growing public unease about immigration and Islam in Europe, together with the post-coup clampdown in Turkey, make a Turkish entry into the EU even less likely in the forseeable future.

Turkey has set its sights on getting visa-free travel for its citizens to the EU by the end of the year in return for making sure migrants do not leave its shores for Europe. That prospect, however, is also looking increasingly dim.

Turkey reinstating death penalty would mark crossing a red line for EU leaders. “If Turkey pushes through death penalty legislation, then the halt of the accession process will be automatic,” a senior EU diplomat said.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald; writing by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Trial begins of Islamic State suspects in Turkey’s worst suicide bombing

Carnations are seen placed on the ground during a protest against explosions at a peace march in Ankara, in central Istanbul, Turkey,

By Ece Toksabay

ANKARA (Reuters) – More than a dozen suspected members of Islamic State appeared under police protection in an Ankara courtroom on Monday accused of involvement in Turkey’s deadliest suicide bombing, which killed more than 100 people in the capital just over a year ago.

The defendants were brought into the courtroom under the protection of riot police in body armor and helmets, as families and lawyers of the victims chanted “murderers” and demanded the state also accept responsibility.

“If the security measures used to protect the killers today were taken during the rally, the Ankara train station massacre wouldn’t have taken place,” said Mahmut Tanal, a member of parliament for main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The defendants were among 36 suspects, some still at large, on trial for plotting the double suicide bombing outside the main train station in Ankara on Oct. 10, 2015, which killed mainly young pro-Kurdish and left-wing activists at a rally.

The 35 Turks and one Kazakh face charges of murder, membership of a terrorist organization and seeking to change the constitutional order, according to the indictment. Some face multiple sentences of up to 11,750 years in prison.

The twin suicide bombing took place in NATO member Turkey 20 days before a fiercely contested general election, raising tensions between the authorities and opposition supporters among the Kurdish community, Turkey’s largest minority.

“A comprehensive and effective investigation has not been carried out into the bombing. No state officials are accused of neglect in the indictment. How can we expect justice from such a trial?” lawyer Mehtap Sakinci Cosgun, whose husband was killed in the bombing, told Reuters outside the courtroom.

Turkish forces have been combating an armed campaign by Kurdish militants while Kurdish political organizations have also been the subject of arrests over the last week.

One of the suicide bombers was identified as Turkish citizen Yunus Emre Alagoz and the other as a Syrian citizen who has yet to be identified, according to the indictment seen by Reuters.

Three of the suspects on trial on Monday appeared by video link from the southern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border, where the Islamic State cell responsible for the attack is thought to have been based.

Islamic State has grown increasingly active in Turkey. A gun-and-bomb attack blamed on the group at Istanbul’s main airport in June killed 47 people, while the bombing of a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep in August killed 57.

Turkey launched a military incursion into Syria shortly after the wedding attack in a bid to push the radical jihadist group away from its border and prevent Kurdish militia fighters from gaining ground in their wake.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

Islamic State deploys car bombs in new Syria battle

A U.S. fighter walks down a ladder from a barricade, north of Raqqa city, Syria

BEIRUT, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have set off five car bombs targeting U.S.-backed Syrian armed groups
attacking Raqqa, a Kurdish source said on Monday, saying the fight to drive IS from its stronghold city would “not be easy.”

The operation by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including the Kurdish YPG militia, that began on Saturday aims
to encircle and ultimately capture Raqqa, adding to the pressure on IS as it faces a major assault in Iraq.

Islamic State has also drawn heavily on suicide car bombs in its efforts to fend off the assault on Mosul by Iraqi forces.

The Kurdish source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S.-led coalition was providing “excellent” air support for the operation dubbed “Euphrates Anger.”

“It is difficult to … put a time frame on the operation at present. The battle will not be easy,” the source said.

The attack so far appears focused on areas north of Raqqa near the town of Ain Issa, 50 km (30 miles) away. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that reports on the war, said the SDF forces had so far captured a number of IS positions, but there had been “no real progress.”

The Kurdish source said a number of villages had been captured. “Daesh is resorting to attacks with car bombs to a
great degree,” the source said.

The SDF has been the main partner on the ground in Syria for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, capturing swathes of northern Syria with coalition air support.

Planning for the Raqqa assault has been complicated by factors including the concerns of neighboring Turkey, which
does not want to see any further expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria.

Additionally, Raqqa is a predominantly Arab city, and Syrian Kurdish officials have previously said it should be freed from IS by Syrian Arab groups, not the Kurdish YPG.

A U.S. official told Reuters in Washington there was “no available force capable of taking Raqqa in the near future,” and U.S. officials cautioned the process of sealing off and isolating the city could take two months or longer.

(Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Turkey’s Erdogan says Germany has become ‘haven for terrorists’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, October 19, 2016. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Germany had become a haven for terrorists and would be “judged by history”, accusing it of failing to root out supporters of a U.S.-based cleric Ankara blames for July’s failed military coup.

Erdogan said Germany had long harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, and far-leftists from the DHKP-C, which has carried out armed attacks in Turkey.

“We are concerned that Germany, which has protected the PKK and DHKP-C for years, has become the backyard of the Gulenist terror organization,” Erdogan said, referring to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

“We don’t have any expectations from Germany but you will be judged in history for abetting terrorism … Germany has become an important haven for terrorists,” he told a ceremony at his palace in the capital Ankara.

Ankara blames Gulen for the coup attempt and has suspended or dismissed more than 110,000 of his suspected followers from the civil service, security forces and other institutions in a crackdown. Gulen has denied involvement in the putsch.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told reporters on Tuesday that he did not want to judge whether the Gulenist movement was political in nature or not. He also said Berlin would not extradite suspects if they faced political charges.

“That would certainly not happen,” he said. For any extradition to take place, there had to be firm indications of “classic criminal activity”.

Erdogan said he was concerned by Germany’s reluctance, and warned that “the menace of terrorism would come back and strike it like a boomerang.”

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

Islamic State leader says ‘no retreat from Mosul assault’

Military vehicles of Iraqi army take part in an operation against Islamic State militants in Qaraqosh, near Mosul, Iraq,

By Stephen Kalin and Dominic Evans

KOKJALI/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – With Iraqi troops battling inside the Islamic State bastion of Mosul, the militants’ leader told his followers there could be no retreat in a “total war” against the forces arrayed against them.

Expressing confidence that his Islamic State fighters would prevail against Shi’ite Islam, Western “crusaders” and the Sunni “apostate” countries of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on the jihadists to “wreak havoc”.

“This raging battle and total war, and the great jihad that the state of Islam is fighting today only increases our firm belief, God willing, and our conviction that all this is a prelude to victory,” Baghdadi said in an audio recording released online by supporters on Thursday.

Iraqi regular troops and special forces, Shi’ite militias, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by U.S.-led air strikes launched a campaign two weeks ago to retake Mosul.

Winning back the country’s second biggest city would mark the defeat of the Iraq wing of a crossborder caliphate which Baghdadi declared from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. Islamic State also holds large parts of neighboring Syria.

In his first audio message released in nearly a year, Baghdadi called on the population of Mosul’s Nineveh province “not to weaken in the jihad” against the “enemies of God”.

He also called on the group’s suicide fighters to “turn the nights of the unbelievers into days, to wreak havoc in their land and make their blood flow as rivers”.

Addressing those who might consider fleeing, he said: “Know that the value of staying on your land with honor is a thousand times better than the price of retreating with shame.”

ROCKET FIRE

Shortly after Baghdadi’s speech was released at around 2 a.m., residents said heavy explosions shook eastern Mosul. One said the militants fired dozens of rockets toward the Intisar, Quds and Samah districts where soldiers have been closing in.

“We heard the sounds of rockets firing one after the other and saw them flashing through the air. The house was shaking and we were terrified, not knowing what was taking place.”

Fighters were on the street, unusually showing their faces, he said. “They were saying ‘We will fight till death. The caliph gave us a morale boost to fight the infidels’,” he said.

Another witness from the Hadba neighborhood of north Mosul said that Islamic State vehicles patrolled the area and blasted out Baghdadi’s speech, urging fighters to hold their positions.

Outside the city’s eastern limits, hundreds of civilians streamed away from the conflict, packed into cars, pickups and trucks, waving white flags and hooting horns. Cows and sheep also filled the road from Kokjali, on the eastern edge of Mosul.

Many were from Kokjali itself, which was cleared of Islamic State fighters by Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service troops earlier this week.

Fleeing residents said there had been heavy mortar fire launched by retreating Islamic State fighters.

By mid-morning, a Reuters correspondent in the Kokjali district of the city saw smoke rising from inside Mosul but there were no sounds of fighting.

Lieutenant-General Talib Shaghati said CTS troops were on the edge of the eastern Karama, Intisar and Samah districts.

The exact location of Baghdadi, an Iraqi whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, is not clear. Reports have said he may be in Mosul itself, or in Islamic State-held land to the west of the city, close to the border with Syria.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said intelligence suggested that Baghdadi had “vacated the scene”, but he did not say where the Islamic State leader might be.

The authenticity of the 31-minute-long recording could not be immediately verified, but the voice and style closely resembled those of previous speeches Baghdadi has delivered.

The recording appeared to be recent as it focused on the Mosul offensive, although he did not mention the city by name.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, much more than any of the other cities captured by Islamic State two years ago in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been advancing on Mosul for two weeks from the north, from the eastern Nineveh plains and up the Tigris river from the south.

The Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces of mainly Shi’ite militias joined the campaign on Saturday, launching an offensive to cut off any supply or escape to the west.

The leader of the Badr Organisation, the largest of the Popular Mobilisation militias, said his forces would cut off the main western supply route on Thursday, leaving Islamic State surrounded.

Brett McGurk, U.S. President Barack Obama’s counter-Islamic State envoy, said the Mosul campaign was ahead of schedule. “Iraqi forces enter eastern neighborhoods of Mosul this morning. New advances on all axes,” McGurk tweeted.

Senior Kurdish politician Hoshiyar Zebari said in a tweet that Islamic State blew up parts of a bridge linking the eastern and western sides of the city to try to prevent its fighters abandoning the eastern districts. Residents said there had been an explosion at the bridge but said the cause was not clear.

TARGETING TURKEY AND SAUDI

In a sectarian speech, Baghdadi called for attacks on both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, saying the Sunni countries had both sided with the enemy in a war he said was targeting Sunni Islam.

Islamic State fighters should “unleash the fire of their anger” on Turkish troops fighting them in Syria, and take the battle into Turkey.

“Turkey entered the zone of your operations, so attack it, destroy its security, and sow horror within it. Put it on your list of battlefields. Turkey entered the war with the Islamic State with cover and protection from Crusader jets,” he said referring to the U.S.-led air coalition.

Baghdadi also told his followers to launch “attack after attack” in Saudi Arabia, targeting security forces, government officials, members of the ruling Al Saud family and media outlets, for “siding with the infidel nations in the war on Islam and the Sunna (Sunni Muslims) in Iraq and Syria”.

Islamic State has been on the retreat since last year in both Iraq and Syria, in the face of a myriad of different forces seeking to crush the ultra-hardline group.

In addition to the forces marching on Mosul, it faces a broad range of foes in neighboring Syria. There it is fighting Turkish-backed Syrian rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, as well as Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian army units loyal to Assad and foreign Shi’ite militias.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo, and Maher Chmaytell and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; editing by David Stamp)

Turkey issues detention warrants for 137 more academics over failed coup

A Turkish special forces police officer guards the entrance of the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey,

NKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities issued arrest warrants for 137 academics on Wednesday over suspected links to the cleric who Ankara says orchestrated an attempted coup, CNN Turk reported, widening a crackdown that has worried rights groups and Western allies.

Turkey has formally arrested more than 37,000 people and has already sacked or suspended 100,000 civil servants, judges, prosecutors, police and others in an unprecedented purge.

The government says it is rooting out supporters of Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, from the state apparatus and other key positions.

Gulen has denied Ankara’s charges and denounced the July failed coup by rogue members of the military.

Among the latest suspects, 31 of them have already been detained and another 22 are believed to have fled abroad, CNN Turk said, citing the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office. The prosecutor’s office could not be reached for comment.

Over the weekend, Turkey dismissed more than 10,000 civil servants over alleged links to Gulen. Thousands of academics, teachers and health workers were among those removed through a new emergency rule decree published late on Saturday.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan and Richard Balmforth)

Turkey detains editor, top staff at opposition newspaper

Supporters of Cumhuriyet newspaper, an opposition secularist daily, hold today's copies during a protest in front of its headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish police detained the editor and senior staff of a leading opposition newspaper on Monday over its alleged support for a failed coup in July, in a move described by a top EU politician as the crossing of a red line against freedom of expression.

Updating earlier information on its website, Cumhuriyet newspaper said 11 staff including the editor were being held by authorities, and arrest warrants had been issued for five more.

Turkey’s crackdown since rogue soldiers tried to seize power on July 15 has alarmed Western allies and rights groups, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup attempt to crush dissent. More than 110,000 people have been sacked or suspended and 37,000 arrested over the past three and a half months.

The latest detentions came a day after 10,000 more civil servants were dismissed and 15 more media outlets shut down.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the staff at the paper, one of few media outlets still critical of Erdogan, were suspected of committing crimes on behalf of Kurdish militants and the network of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric. Turkey accuses Gulen of orchestrating the coup attempt, in which he denies any involvement.

“An investigation was launched… due to allegations and assessments that shortly before the attempted coup, material was published justifying the coup,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Cumhuriyet said several of its staff had their laptops seized from their homes. Footage showed one writer, Aydin Engin, 75, being ushered by plain clothes police into a hospital for medical checks.

Asked by reporters to comment on his detention, Engin said: “I work for Cumhuriyet, isn’t that enough?”

Another veteran journalist, Kadri Gursel, who began writing for Cumhuriyet in May, said on Twitter that his house was being searched and that there was an arrest warrant for him.

Several hundred people gathered in front of Cumhuriyet’s Istanbul offices in support of the paper, chanting and holding banners that said “Journalism is not a crime” and “Sharp pens will tear through the dark”.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz wrote on Twitter that the detentions marked the crossing of ‘yet another red-line’ against freedom of expression in Turkey. “The ongoing massive purge seems motivated by political considerations, rather than legal and security rationale,” he said.

The government has said its measures are justified by the threat posed to the state by the coup attempt, in which more than 240 people were killed.

A court on Sunday also jailed, pending trial, the co-mayors of the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. The head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) called on opposition groups to stand together against a “tyrannical mentality”.

“We are facing a new phase in the coordinated oppression managed by the AKP headquarters to ensure no opposition remains,” Selahattin Demirtas told reporters. The AKP is the governing party.

‘COMICAL SITUATION’

Before turning himself in, veteran cartoonist Musa Kart told reporters outside Cumhuriyet’s offices that such means of pressure were not going to succeed in frightening people.

“This is a comical situation,” he said. “It is not possible for people with a conscience to accept this. You can’t explain this to the world. I am being detained solely for drawing caricatures.”

Cumhuriyet’s previous editor, Can Dundar, was jailed last year for publishing state secrets involving Turkey’s support for Syrian rebels. The case sparked censure from rights groups and Western governments worried about worsening human rights in Turkey under Erdogan.

Cumhuriyet said Dundar, who was freed in February and is now abroad, was one of those facing arrest.

“They are attacking ‘the last bastion’,” Dundar wrote on Twitter as news of the operation emerged. A month after the failed coup, Dundar told Reuters he feared the government would attempt to link him to the putsch.

Opposition groups say the purges are being used to silence all dissent in Turkey, a NATO member which aspires to membership of the European Union.

Since the attempted coup, 170 newspapers, magazines, television stations and news agencies have been shut down, leaving 2,500 journalists unemployed, Turkey’s journalists’ association said in a statement protesting the detentions.

“This operation is a new coup against freedom of expression and of the press,” it said, adding that 105 journalists were in jail pending trial and the press cards of 777 journalists had been canceled.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Trevelyan)

Turkey detains co-mayors of mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir

Turkey official

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities on Tuesday detained the co-mayors of the mainly Kurdish southeast’s biggest city on charges they aided militants, part of a government crackdown after more than a year of violence in the region.

Gultan Kisanak, a former member of parliament before her election as mayor in Diyarbakir, and Firat Anli, her co-mayor, were taken into custody as part of an investigation into terrorism links, the local prosecutor said in a statement.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the removal of elected officials and civil servants who are accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, is a key part of the fight against the armed group.

The two are accused of making speeches in support of the PKK and of greater political autonomy for Turkey’s estimated 16 million Kurds, the Diyarbakir prosecutor’s statement said.

They are also accused of using municipal vehicles to transport the bodies of dead militants and of inciting violent protests, it said.

Turkey appointed new administrators in two dozen Kurdish-run municipalities in September after removing their elected mayors over suspected links to militants. Those arrests triggered protests across the region.

Authorities were also searching the mayor’s office, security sources said. An aide to Kisanak said the mayor’s home was being searched by police but was unable to provide further details.

Police formed a security cordon around city hall in case the latest detentions stirred unrest, witnesses said.

Kisanak, 55, is a well-known Kurdish political figure and became Diyarbakir’s first female mayor in 2014. Earlier on Tuesday, she testified upon the invitation of lawmakers at a parliamentary commission in Ankara looking into a failed military coup on July 15.

It was not immediately clear whether her testimony was related to the detention order. Kisinak was detained upon her return to Diyarbakir at the airport, while Anli was detained at his home, sources said.

Erdogan accuses their opposition party, the Democratic Regions Party and its larger, sister party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, which is the third-biggest grouping in parliament, of links with the PKK, which both parties deny.

The autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and more than 40,000 people have died in the war.

The PKK abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July 2015 after peace talks had ground to a halt, and violence has escalated sharply since. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers, thousands of militants and about 400 civilians have been killed.

(Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Alison Williams and James Dalgleish)

Turkey’s post-coup emergency rule led to torture, abuse

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey,

By Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has effectively written a “blank check” to security services to torture people detained after a failed military coup attempt, a U.S.-based rights group said on Tuesday, citing accusations of beatings, sleep deprivation and sexual abuse.

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) said a “climate of fear” had prevailed since July’s failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan and the arrest of thousands under a State of Emergency. It identified more than a dozen cases raised in interviews with lawyers, activists, former detainees and others.

A Turkish official said the Justice Ministry would respond to the report later in the day; but Ankara has repeatedly denied accusations of torture and said the post-coup crackdown was needed to stabilize a NATO state facing threats from Kurdish militants as well as wars in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW, said in a statement it “would be tragic if two hastily passed emergency decrees end up undermining the progress Turkey made to combat torture.”

“By removing safeguards against torture, the Turkish government effectively wrote a blank check to law enforcement agencies to torture and mistreat detainees as they like,” he said.

Erdogan reined in police use of torture especially in the largely Kurdish southeast, seat of a militant rebellion, when he first came to power in 2002. But the battle with Kurdish militants has become more fierce since the breakdown of a ceasefire last year and drawn accusations of rights abuses.

HRW said it had uncovered allegations that police had used methods including sleep deprivation, severe beatings, sexual abuse and the threat of rape since the failed coup. Cases were not limited to possible putschists, but also involved detainees suspected of links to Kurdish militant and leftist groups.

Turkey has arrested more than 35,000 people, detained thousands more and sacked over 100,000 people over their suspected links with Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric blamed for orchestrating the coup attempt. Gulen denies the charge.

The government says the widescale crackdown is justified by the gravity of the threat to the state on July 15, when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighters jets, bombing parliament and killing more than 240 people.

Erdogan declared a state of emergency days after the failed putsch, allowing him and the cabinet to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary.

Emergency decrees have since extended the period of police detention without judicial review to 30 days from 4, allowed the authorities to deny detainees access to lawyers for up to five days, and to restrict their choice of lawyer.

HRW said it had found 13 specific cases of alleged abuse in its report, which was based on interviews with more than 40 lawyers, activists, former detainees, medical personnel and forensic specialists conducted in August and September.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall)