3rd Jul 2008
. .July 1 (Bloomberg) — Turkish police detained more than 20 people suspected of ties to a group of alleged coup plotters, including two retired generals and the chief of Ankara’s main business lobby, deepening a split between the government and opponents who accuse it of illegally promoting religion.
Former generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur were arrested early today, a spokesman for the Ankara police said by telephone. Authorities had to break down the door of Tolon’s home in the capital, the spokesman said. Ankara Chamber of Commerce chief Sinan Aygun was also taken into custody, said Melih Cuhadar, a spokesman for the chamber.
The sweep came hours before prosecutors presented an indictment to the Constitutional Court to close down Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. They say Erdogan wants to dismantle the secular state set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
“It seems the government is throwing down the gauntlet to the key players in the secular camp,” said Erik Zurcher, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and author of “Turkey: A Modern History.” “Perhaps it feels it has nothing left to lose because the party’s closure will come anyway.”
The benchmark stock index had its biggest drop since March 17, as the political outlook rattled investors, said Orhan Canli, a trader at broker Is Yatirim in Istanbul. Bonds fell and the lira weakened.
`More Unstable’
“Turkey is a lot more unstable than it was yesterday,” said Bulent Aliriza, head of the Turkey program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, in a telephone interview.
The high court ruled against Erdogan in a related case in June, striking down a law allowing women to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities. The government, set to present its defense in two days, asserts the prosecution case rests on an “anachronistic” understanding of secularism.
Today’s arrests create “an environment of fear” and resemble events in Iran prior to the Islamic revolution of 1979, the opposition Republican People’s Party leader Deniz Baykal told his lawmakers in a televised meeting in Ankara.
Ankara police spokesman said 24 people were rounded up today. The state-run Anatolia news agency said 21 were held in Ankara, Istanbul and other cities and three were at large.
Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, deputy chief of Erdogan’s Justice and Development party, said the independence of the judiciary to conduct its investigation should be respected, CNN Turk television reported.
January Arrests
Dozens of suspected members of a group of alleged plotters, including former military officers, were arrested in January for possible involvement in bomb plots and other activities against the Turkish state.
Erdogan in March denied any links between the arrests and the closure case against his party. Prosecutors also want Erdogan, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and 70 party officials banned from politics for five years.
“Whatever people say, whatever obstacles they put in the way, there can be no other path than change, development and democratization,” Erdogan told his deputies in Ankara today.
Turkey‘s army has ousted four governments from power in as many decades. Military leaders sought to block parliament’s appointment of Gul last year because of his Islamist past, prompting Erdogan to call an early general election.
Stocks Slump
Turkey‘s main stock index slumped 5.4 percent in Istanbul. Bond yields on benchmark lira debt tracked by ABN Amro rose 37 basis points to 22.80 percent. The lira fell 1.5 percent against the dollar to 1.2443.
Retired General Eruygur, who was detained today, heads the Ataturk Thought Association, a pro-secular lobby. The group organized rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people last year to protest Gul’s appointment as president.
Turkish police also arrested Mustafa Balbay, the Ankara bureau chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, Mutluhan Karagozoglu, a lawyer for the newspaper, said in a televised news conference in Ankara. Cumhuriyet’s writers have accused the government of flouting Turkey’s secular rules.
“I am accused of loving Ataturk and the republic,” Aygun told reporters as he returned to the business group’s headquarters in central Ankara, accompanied by police, who began searching his office, Cuhudar said.
