Turkey no longer coup country, says Erdoğan

TEKİRDAĞ - Anatolia News Agency

The PM denies suggestins that his ruling party is after a revenge with coup investigations. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Turkey is no longer a “country of coups” thanks to the way it has come to deal with military interventions into politics, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday.
 
“Turkey is no longer a country where whoever gets up early in the morning can deliver a coup d’état,” Erdoğan told a congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Thracian province of Tekirdağ.

Erdoğan slammed Turkey’s past military coups, criticized the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and defended the ongoing trials against alleged coup plots during his speech.

“Some [people] in this country did not recognize the will of the people. Some [people] in this country did not recognize the will of Parliament. Some [people] did not recognize [Turkey’s founder] Gazi Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk], who said that ‘Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the people. ... They said ‘sovereignty belongs to us’ and got the tanks rolling,” Erdoğan said.

The prime minister also criticized the CHP for allegedly calling the military to intervene before the last elections and said many of them had now begun posing as “heroes of democracy.”

“Neither the Sept. 12 [coup of 1980] nor the Feb. 28 [process of 1997] have come under investigation due to vengeful sentiments, but rather in the name of the people’s will and the nation. These investigations are being conducted not for the AKP’s sake but for the nation, for Turkey and her future, and with the good of the CHP and the MHP [Nationalist Movement Party] in mind,” he added.

“We have never been after revenge or settling scores. We said justice would prevail. The judiciary is now doing its job,” he said. “We do not want such things to happen in Turkey again. These trials are taking place to prevent Turkey’s future from waning.”

Politics in Turkey has remained under a regime of tutelage for decades and was always overshadowed by forces outside of politics who wanted their will to reign, rather than the people’s, Erdoğan said.

“These [people] have always scorned this nation. These [people] always scorned the will of the people and their choices. They forced those empowered by the people out of their offices by force of arms, repression, conspiracy and provocation,” he said.

No one remembers the “undistinguished” people who gave former Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and his aides, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan, the death penalty in 1961, he said, adding that no one had forgotten the trio.