Free Republic

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s director of policy planning, now denies she endorsed Today’s Zaman, the flagship newspaper of Fethullah Gülen’s Islamist cult. Here is a google cache record with Prof. Slaughter’s endorsement, and here is the page now, with Professor Slaughter’s endorsement excised. Professor Slaughter denies she made the endorsementThere are two possible explanations: (1) Professor Slaughter is being truthful, and Today’s Zaman simply made it all up. If so, this suggests that the ethics of Zaman and the organization which sponsors it are non-existent. (2) Professor Slaughter asked for the retraction only after learning about Today’s...

Nazire Terzi, the widow of Brig. Gen. Semih Terzi, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday, has said the night of a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and the killing of her husband for being a coup plotter are shrouded in mystery and that the only thing she wants is for the facts to come out.Semih Terzi was killed by noncommissioned officer Ömer Halisdemir at the Special Forces Command in the Gölbaşı district of Ankara during the coup attempt. Reportedly, Terzi would take over the Special Forces Command with the putschist soldiers accompanying him...

Following the failed coup of July 15, the Turkish government has begun a brutal crackdown on people who it claims have ties with the movement of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the government accuses of organizing the attempted coup.This scale of arrests and governmental pressures might be new to Muslim Turks, but Armenians – the victims of Turkish racism for all seasons – are being targeted again.The newspaper Agos covered the latest rights abuses against Armenians:Armenian trainer fired under the cover of “Fethullah Terrorist Organization”As part of the purge that was started after the coup attempt,...

Turkey announced the dismissal of another 7,000 police, soldiers and officials on Friday, a new purge on the eve of the one-year anniversary of a military-led coup that failed to topple President Tayyip Erdogan. July 15 has been declared an annual national holiday of "democracy and unity" and the authorities want people to see the foiling of the putsch as a historic victory of Turkish democracy. Friday's measures, however, mean that 50,000 people have been arrested and a further 100,000 sacked in response to the thwarted bid to overthrow Erdogan. Some 7,563 people were fired in the latest cull, the...

Vocal Europe news site has published an interview based on an extensive, full of inquiries and recorded conversation with five former Turkish Senior Officers, from Armed Forces, Air Forces and Navy, who served at SHAPE and NATO Headquarters in Belgium and who were purged after the attempted coup on 15 July last year. The interview gives place to the five officers' opinions on the coup attempt of 15th July 2015, and confessions on the situation of the Turkish army. The officers state that the Turkish army has been suffering heavy losses, and hold ErdoÄŸan's supporters responsible for the deadlock...

The dominant assessment in NATO is clear: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan staged the coup against himself.By KJETIL STORMARK / kjetil@aldrimer.noSenior NATO sources tell aldrimer.no that they believe Erdoğan staged the coup himself. However, they stress that there is no written NATO documentation for that claim, because it is simply too sensitive. That’s because all member nation’s have the right to access to all intelligence information gathered by the alliance.1,600 namesBut the dominant NATO assessment is quite clear.«The senior officers, three- and four-star generals, and those who worked with Turkey for 30-40 years and who mentored Turkish officers for...

Hundreds of Turkish military personnel working for NATO have been accused by their government of trying to overthrow Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July. Since that failed military coup attempt, in which 260 people were killed, high-ranking officers at NATO installations across Europe and the U.S. have been summarily fired or had their foreign assignments curtailed. In Brussels, several Turkish officers, who until recently had been assigned to NATO, spoke with NPR and requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. They describe a tense situation in which they and their colleagues tried to continue doing their jobs at NATO...

EXCLUSIVE/ Two independent sources told EurActiv.com that the US has started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara . According to one of the sources, the transfer has been very challenging in technical and political terms. “It’s not easy to move 20+ nukes,” said the source, on conditions of anonymity. According to a recent report by the Simson Center, since the Cold War, some 50 US tactical nuclear weapons have been stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, approximately 100 kilometres from the Syrian border. During the failed coup in...

Turkish authorities have been hard-pressed to find room for the 35,000 people that have been detained since the coup attempt last month that killed more than 270 people. Currently 23,400 people are in custody in connection to coup allegations, a Turkish official said Wednesday. ... Human rights groups and opposition politicians have voiced concerns over the wave of detentions immediately after the coup attempt. Soldiers and officers sympathetic to it were rounded up and detained, handcuffed in their underwear in sports halls and stadiums. ... In the letter, the parliamentarians said they had asked that a delegation be set up...

Dozens of US nuclear weapons stored at a Turkish air base near Syria are at risk of being captured by "terrorists or other hostile forces," a Washington think tank claimed Monday. Critics have long been alarmed by America's estimated stockpile of about 50 nuclear bombs at Incirlik in southern Turkey, just 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the border with war-torn Syria. The issue took on fresh urgency last month following the attempted coup in Turkey, in which the base's Turkish commander was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the plot.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Post-coup actions turn precarious for Christians, and potentially fatal for a vision of a civil Islam. In Turkey, a failed military coup against President Recep ErdoÄŸan on July 15, squelched in about six hours, has triggered a fierce government response: mass civilian arrests, declaration of a state of emergency giving ErdoÄŸan authoritarian power for at least three months and a hateful atmosphere of accusation that puts Christians at risk. As a longtime American ally, a member of NATO since 1952 and a country where important American military assets are located, TurkeyÂ’s stability has special significance for the U.S....

Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Turkey later this month to smooth over the administration’s relationship with the NATO ally. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime survived a coup attempt last month and has since been cracking down on journalists, academics and the military in an effort to suppress what it sees as vestiges of the coup movement. The White House said in a release that Biden's stop in Ankara will be part of a three-day trip that also includes visits to Latvia and Sweden.

Some 5,000 state employees have been sacked and 77,000 suspended in the purge since last month's failed coup in Turkey, the prime minister says. Binali Yildirim told reporters in Ankara that more than 3,000 of those sacked were members of the military. They are suspected of links to exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, he said. Announcing a visit to Turkey by US Vice-President Joe Biden, he again urged the US to extradite Mr Gulen. The cleric, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, from where he runs a worldwide network of charities and...

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat dowb with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin Tuesday for a diplomatic reset — just as relations with the United States and Europe show strains after last month's failed coup. The summit was aimed at ending a period of high tension and trade sanctions after Turkey downed a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border last November — an act described by Putin as a "stab in the back." Turkey's relations with traditional allies including the U.S. have faltered over Ankara's post-coup crackdown, which has seen nearly 18,000 people detained or arrested and tens of thousands...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told a vast rally in Istanbul that he would approve the return of the death penalty if it was backed by parliament and the public. He was speaking to at least a crowd of at least a million who had gathered in Turkey's biggest city. The rally followed last month's failed military coup. Mr Erdogan also said the state would be cleansed of all supporters of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The cleric is blamed by the Turkish government for the attempted uprising. He denies any involvement. Religious figures and leaders of two of...

Six suspects were arrested in an alleged plot to launch a rocket attack on Singapore's Marina Bay from the Indonesian island of Batam, Indonesian media reported Friday. Singapore's Minister of Defence Ng Eng Hen confirmed in a Facebook post late Friday that one of the alleged plans of the group of suspects was to use rockets to attack targets in Marina Bay from Batam. "We should assume that there may be more plots, other terror cells on the lookout for ways, and new munitions to penetrate our defenses," Ng said. Parts of the Batam Island are as little as 20...

Gökhan Acikkoglu was, until very recently, a teacher in Turkey. Nobody expected that he would die eight days after a small part of the Turkish army staged a (failed) coup. Yet, that's exactly what happened. After the failed coup Gökhan was arrested by the authorities. Of course, he didn't have anything to do with the coup. After the all, the power grab was carried out by members of the military. Gökhan was sitting at home when it all happened and was just hoping he would be able to continue to teach his students the knowledge they need to succeed in...

Now that Erdogan is purging Turkey of its remaining secular elements, the brazen Islamist leader has unleashed his goons on American forces in the country. What does this mean for the future of the United States in Turkey? And should Turkey be ejected from NATO after all?In other news, the Summer Olympics in Rio open this Friday. We cover the news pertaining to the games and their security. Finally, the presidential campaigns are in full swing. Join us Saturday as we discuss the latest developments… Topics of Discussion: - Latest Campaign and Political Developments - Trump’s Proposed Russian Policies -...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to arrive in Turkey later this month, Turkey's foreign minister said Friday, amid strained relations with Washington over the possible extradition of a Muslim cleric accused of being behind an attempted military coup last month. The Turkish government has expressed growing annoyance with what it regards as a lack of solidarity from international allies in the aftermath of the failed coup, as well as increased frustration over perceived foot-dragging by the United States over a Turkish demand that U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen be returned to Turkey to face trial. Turkey accuses...

ISTANBUL — A Turkish newspaper reported that an American academic and former State Department official had helped orchestrate a violent conspiracy to topple the Turkish government from a fancy hotel on an island in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul. The same newspaper, in a front-page headline, flat-out said the United States had tried to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the failed coup. When another pro-government newspaper asked Turks in a recent poll conducted on Twitter which part of the United States government had supported the coup plotters, the C.I.A. came in first, with 69 percent,...