Ex-union heads deny coup support

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Fuat Miras, former president of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), said Oct. 9 that the organization did not support the Feb. 28 coup, and had instead announced that the problem should be solved in Parliament.

Members of Parliament’s Coups and Military Memorandums Inquiry Commission heard Miras and former head of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD), Muharrem Kayhan, speak concerning their role in the run-up to the Feb. 28 process, the harsh army-led campaign that forced Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, the late Necmettin Erbakan, to resign in June 1997. Miras said he had never welcomed the coup, and that in fact he had shared this with the public. Former Prime Ministers Erbakan and Tansu Çiller were in competition for the prime ministry, and the military began putting pressure on the government as result of this, he said. “TOBB objected to that [the military intervention]. Five civil society organizations came together and declared that we were against the coup,” Miras said.