Top soldier’s answers to Turkey’s coup panel not serious: Main opposition spokesperson

ANKARA

Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar’s response to the parliamentary commission tasked with investigating Turkey’s failed July 2016 coup attempt are “not serious,” the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has stated, dismissing the commission’s work as being under the influence of the government. 

“There is an eight-page statement [from Akar] but it contains nothing serious or worthwhile. They are unserious answers to a deeply serious situation,” CHP spokesperson Bülent Tezcan said after the party’s Central Executive Board (MYK) meeting on May 31.

Akar submitted his response to questions posed by the panel in a written statement on May 30, and Tezcan criticized him for not participating in the panel discussions while the commission was conducting its investigation.

“The Chief of General Staff should have gone to give a statement to the commission. He should have been listened to there and his answers should have been cross-examined with live questions, not one-way questions. We would like to know why the Chief of General Staff avoided that,” Tezcan said.

“Why didn’t he go and give a statement [in person]? We are also wondering why the political will, which has the authority to send him there, chose not to send him. This needs to be explained,” he added.

Tezcan reiterated the CHP’s stance on the report, which it sees as an attempt to “cover up the political leg of the coup.”

“The fact that the head of the commission used a fake document while revealing the draft report shows how frivolous the commission report was,” he added, referring to a fake document allegedly showing a financial donation from U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen to the CHP.

Tezcan stated that the CHP’s members of the commission are currently working on a separate assessment report, which they are set to complete within the next week.