Foreign powers ‘played a role in Turkey’s coups’

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The foreign powers had played a role in all of the coups in Turkey, Kutan says. AA photo

Recai Kutan, the former head of the Felicity Party, has suggested that foreign powers were involved in all of the military coups staged in Turkey’s recent history.

Kutan appeared on Friday before Parliament’s Coups and Military Memorandums Inquiry Commission’s sub-committee on the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup d’état. The staging of military coups is a tradition inherited from the Ottoman Empire that continued until 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, Kutan said. Kutan was a close friend and aid to Erbakan.

“You should have no doubt about the intervention of external powers [in Turkey’s military coups],” Kutan said. “The Feb. 28 coupwas more organized than previous coups. [Powers based] beyond the Atlantic and in Tel Aviv [influenced the coup],” he said, apparently in reference to the United States and Israel.