Turkey releases military chiefs wanted over coup plot

Ex-Air Force head Gen Ibrahim Firtina was among those questioned

A Turkish court has freed the former heads of the navy and air force after they were questioned over an alleged coup plot, Anatolia news agency said.

It was unclear whether the two men - arrested on Monday with more than 40 other officers - face charges.

Some 20 senior military officers have been charged and remanded in custody this week over the suspected 2003 plot.

Earlier, President Abdullah Gul said tensions over the plot would be resolved within the law.

President Gul made the statement after a summit with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and armed forces chief Gen Ilker Basbug.

Tension between the government and the military has risen following a round of arrests over the alleged plot.

The military has denied any coup plot and has held its own officers' summit to discuss the "serious situation" in the wake of the latest arrests.

Reassurance

The retired head of the air force Ibrahim Firtina and former navy chief Ozden Ornek were in court on Thursday morning for questioning, but were later released.

HOW 'COUP PLOTS' EMERGED June 2007: Cache of explosives discovered; ex-soldiers detained July 2008: 20 arrested, including two ex-generals and a senior journalist, for "planning political disturbances and trying to organise a coup" July 2008: Governing AK Party narrowly escapes court ban October 2008: 86 go on trial charged with "Ergenekon" coup plot July 2009: 56 in dock as second trial opens Jan 2010: Taraf newspaper reports 2003 "sledgehammer" plot to provoke coup Feb 2010: More than 40 officers arrested over "sledgehammer"; 20 charged

After several hours of talks on Thursday, Mr Gul sought to reassure the country.

"It was stressed that citizens can be sure that the problems on the agenda will be solved within the framework of the constitution and our laws," a statement from his office said.

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says the Turkish government is embroiled in the greatest test yet of its authority over the armed forces.

Turkey's military has overthrown or forced the resignation of four governments since 1960 - most recently in 1997 - though Gen Basbug has insisted that coups are a thing of the past.

The scale of Monday's operation against the military was unprecedented. Those arrested include two serving admirals, three retired admirals and three retired generals.

Turkey's religious-secular divide Turkish military faces crossroads

A number of them are being kept in jail.

Dozens of current or former members of the military have been arrested in the past few years over similar plot allegations, and some have been charged.

The latest men to be charged were arrested over the so-called "sledgehammer" plot, which reportedly dates back to 2003.

Reports of the alleged plot first surfaced in the liberal Taraf newspaper, which said it had discovered documents detailing plans to bomb two Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a Turkish plane over the Aegean Sea.

The army has said the scenarios were discussed but only as part of a planning exercise at a military seminar.

The alleged plot is similar, and possibly linked, to the reported Ergenekon conspiracy, in which military figures and staunch secularists allegedly planned to foment unrest, leading to a coup.

Scores of people, including military officers, journalists and academics, are on trial in connection with that case.

'Painful transformation'

Analysts say the crackdown on the military would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

The army has regarded itself as the guardian of a secular Turkish state, but its power has been eroded in recent years, with Turkey enacting reforms designed to prepare it for entry to the European Union.

Many Turks regard the cases as the latest stage in an ongoing power struggle between Turkey's secular nationalist establishment and the governing AK Party.

Critics believe the Ergenekon and sledgehammer investigations are simply attempts to silence the government's political and military opponents.

The AK Party has its roots in political Islam, and is accused by some nationalists of having secret plans to turn staunchly secular Turkey into an Islamic state.

The government rejects those claims, saying its intention is to modernise Turkey and move it closer to EU membership.

"Transformations may sometimes be painful," Economy Minister Ali Babacan said Wednesday.

"We are trying to make Turkey's democracy first class."

Attack Puts Afghan Leader and NATO at Odds

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents.

In a statement e-mailed to the news media, Mr. Karzai condemned the weekend attack and said the dead had been civilians, eight of them schoolboys. He called for an investigation.

Local officials, including the governor and members of Parliament from Kunar Province, where the deaths occurred, confirmed the reports. But the Kunar police chief, Khalilullah Ziayee, cautioned that his office was still investigating the killings and that outstanding questions remained, including why the eight young men had been in the same house at the time.

“There are still questions to be answered, like why these students were together and what they were doing on that night,” Mr. Ziayee said.

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A senior NATO official with knowledge of the operation said that the raid had been carried out by a joint Afghan-American force and that its target was a group of men who were known Taliban members and smugglers of homemade bombs, which the American and NATO forces call improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s.

According to the NATO official, nine men were killed. “These were people who had a well-established network, they were I.E.D. smugglers and also were responsible for direct attacks on Afghan security and coalition forces in those area,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.

“When the raid took place they were armed and had material for making I.E.D.’s,” the official added.

Senior American military officials cautioned that such episodes tended to be complex and that because of the anger about civilian casualties, Mr. Karzai was under enormous pressure to speak out quickly, sometimes before investigations were complete. NATO will investigate the killings in conjunction with Mr. Karzai’s staff, the official said.

But the conflicting accounts and Mr. Karzai’s public statements underlined the tensions over civilian casualties that have become among the most contentious between the Afghan president and his international backers, as well as one of the most politically fraught for Afghans.

Several members of Parliament from Kunar, as well as neighboring Nangahar and Laghman Provinces, walked out of a parliamentary session on Monday to show their anger over the deaths. They said that 10 people had been killed and that all were civilians.

“When this story first broke, the local officials were adamant that they were all Taliban” until several members of Parliament from the area called President Karzai, the NATO official said.

The deaths occurred in the village of Ghazi Khan, in the rugged Narang Valley, a rural area difficult to reach. The Taliban are active in much of the province, along with numerous wood and arms smugglers and gem traders.

While some conventional American forces are deployed in Kunar, in the more remote areas most operations are carried out by Special Forces.

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The governor of Kunar, Fazullah Wahidi, said that “the coalition claimed they were enemy fighters,” but that elders in the district and a delegation sent to the remote area had found that “10 people were killed and all of them were civilians.”

A NATO spokesman had no comment on the killings and said that no NATO forces were operating in the area.

Attacks using homemade bombs killed one American service member on Friday and another on Saturday in southern Afghanistan.

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• Karzai: Civilians Killed in Attack (online.wsj.com)

Afghan Civilian Deaths Increase

The number of civilians killed in the conflict in Afghanistan so far this year has risen 24% compared with the same period last year, the UN says.

More than 1,000 people were killed in the first six months of 2009, according to a UN report.

The UN blamed insurgents for using increasingly deadly modes of attack. It also said air strikes by government-allied forces were responsible.

There has been widespread concern in Afghanistan about civilian death tolls.

In June the US military called for better training in an effort to reduce the numbers of civilian deaths.

See civilian casualties in graphics

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of US and Nato-led troops in Afghanistan, said civilian casualties were "deeply concerning" and something he "would love to say we'd get to zero".

"We're trying to build into the culture of our force tremendous sensitivity that everything they may do must be balanced against the possibility of hurting anyone," he said in an interview with the BBC.

The Taliban also issued a new code of conduct earlier this week which says fighters should minimise civilian casualties.

But the UN warned more civilians may be killed in the coming weeks as militants fight back against a major offensive by US forces ahead of key elections next month.

Civilian targets

The report, by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama), says insurgents were responsible for more deaths than government-allied forces.

But it also notes that two-thirds of the deaths caused by government-allied forces came in air strikes.

The rising death toll was partly due to the fact that militants were deliberately basing themselves in residential districts, the report's authors concluded.

The increasingly sophisticated tactics used by insurgents were also highlighted.

There has been a particular rise in co-ordinated attacks, the report says - using suicide bombers and explosives to target government offices.

In those attacks, civilians were always singled out and killed.

In the most recent of these attacks, gunmen and suicide bombers targeted Gardez and Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, killing five people.

Presidential elections

The report also noted that militants increasingly bombed the cars of civilians who work with government or international troops.

Shops selling music and goods deemed to be "immoral" have also been increasingly targeted.

Civilian deaths rose every month this year compared with 2008, except for February. May was cited as the deadliest month, with 261 civilians killed.

The BBC's David Loyn, in Kabul, says that even the large increase recorded by the UN is likely to be an underestimate, as many deaths are not counted.

The importance of the report lies in the upward trend, our correspondent says.

This is the third year the UN has counted civilian deaths and the numbers have risen each year.

Elections are due to take place amid tight security on 20 August, when President Hamid Karzai is hoping to secure a second term.

However, in the past week alone there have been two attacks on Afghan election campaigns.

On Tuesday a campaign manager for presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah was wounded when his vehicle was attacked in Laghman province.

Two days earlier there was an assassination attempt on Mohammed Qasim Fahim, a running mate of Mr Karzai.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8177935.stm