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Erdogan using failed coup as excuse to sweep up critics: Analyst

Monday, 03 October 2016 2:16 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 03 October 2016 2:18 PM ]

Police officers stand next to demonstrators protesting in front of the High Education Board (YOK) against the suspension of academics from universities following a post-coup emergency decree, in Ankara on September 22, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the failed coup as an excuse to round up all the critics of his administration, says an analyst.

“This is reminiscent of what happens after a coup, either a failed coup or a successful coup … Clearly there were not 30,000 people involved in the coup and so he [Erdogan] is sweeping up everybody who is a critic,” David Lindorff, an investigative journalist told Press TV.

Lindorff’s comments came after Turkey’s police detained a brother of US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish officials accuse of being behind the July 15 coup attempt.

Some of Gulen’s close relatives have been arrested across Turkey over the past months.

Shortly after the coup attempt was suppressed on July 16, President Erdogan accused Gulen of being behind it.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the failed coup and warned that the blame game could be a ploy by the ruling Justice and Development Party to cement its grip on power.

Gulen has been based in the United States since 1999, when he fled after former secular authorities leveled charges against him.

The analyst further noted by arresting the members of the Gulen family, Turkey is trying to show that they were all behind a “nefarious plot” in order to put pressure on the United States to hand over the cleric himself.

However, he said, Turkish officials have to provide “pretty convincing evidence”, otherwise the United States will not hand over Gulen.

“We have a legal system here. The way it operates is that if the Turks provide some kind of evidence, Gulen has plenty of resources to hire lawyers that would challenge that evidence, and there would have to be a hearing and it would go through courts for probably an endless eternity of appeals, and I would imagine in this case could go right up to the Supreme Court to decide whether or not the evidence was sufficient to justify handing him over and I doubt that the Turks are going to be able to prove that to a satisfactory degree,” he stated.

Ankara’s request for the cleric’s extradition has faced cold response from Washington.

Official figures show some 32,000 people have been arrested for their alleged role in the coup attempt. Nearly 100,000 people in the military, civil service, police and judiciary have been sacked or suspended.

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