Turkish Court Charges 12 Officers in Coup Plot
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: Struggle between secular Turkish military and Islamic-oriented government reaches new heights as senior officers jailed

The struggle between the secular Turkish military and the Islamic-oriented government reached new heights Wednesday as a court jailed 12 senior officers — including five admirals, an army general and six other officers.

The officers are charged with plotting several years ago to topple the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, news reports said Wednesday. More officers could be charged later this week.

Former chiefs of Air Force, Navy and Special Forces were also among about 50 officers detained by police in a sweep Monday.

Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but officially secular country, is witnessing an unprecedented showdown between the country's rising political Islamic movement and its fiercely secular founders, the military officers. >>> Selcan Hacaoglu, Ankara, The Associated Press | Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Turkish Police Arrest 50 in Move Against Anti-Islamist Coup
TIMES ONLINE: Turkish police arrested the former heads of the Navy and Air Force along with several other senior military officers yesterday in a sweep against top brass linked to a coup plan against the Islamist-leaning Government.

The existence of Sledgehammer, a detailed plot hatched in 2002-03, came to light last month. The arrests could be a spectacular milestone in the democratic history of Turkey, where four previous governments have been ousted by the military but no one has come to trial.

“This morning our security forces began a detention process,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, said during an official visit to Spain.

By the end of the day almost 50 people — including Ibrahim Firtina, the former Air Force commander, and Ozden Ornek, the former Navy commander, five other senior former generals and seven serving soldiers — had been detained in a series of early-morning raids in nine cities. They were taken to Istanbul for questioning by anti-terrorism police. >>> Suna Erdem | Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Turkish Prime Minister Almost Hit By Shoe

History Suggests the Coup Will Fail
THE INDEPENDENT: Patrick Cockburn, who reported from Iran during the 1979 revolution, reflects on the fall of the Shah and explains why the current uprising is very different

At first sight, what is happening in Tehran today looks very like the extraordinary events of the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. But how deep do the similarities go? On 2 December 1978, two million Iranians filled the streets of central Tehran to demand an end to the rule of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the most popular revolution in history. At night, people gathered on rooftops to chant "Allahu Akbar – God is Great". In the daytime, mass rallies commemorated as martyrs the protesters who had been killed by the security forces.

The methods of protest are very similar. This is hardly surprising because the demonstrators seeking to get rid of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understandably hope the type of unarmed mass protest that worked against the Shah will succeed again. Mass rally and public martyrdom are part of the Iranian revolutionary tradition, just as the barricade is part of the tradition in France. A difference between 1978-9 and today is that the Iranian government has no intention of letting history repeat itself.

Nor is it likely to do so. The Iranian revolution was carried out by a broad coalition from right to left which had religious conservatives at one end and Marxist revolutionaries at the other. The Shah and his regime had a unique ability to alienate simultaneously different parts of the Iranian population which had nothing in common. His cruel but poorly informed Savak security men convinced themselves that communists and revolutionary leftists were the danger to the throne and not the Shia clergy. They were not alone in their delusion. President Jimmy Carter recalls an August 1978 CIA memo, drafted five months before the Shah took flight, firmly concluding that Iran "is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation".

Crucially, the Iranian revolution had a messianic leader in Ayatollah Khomeini who was a visible alternative to the Shah, a leader whose claims to legitimacy were compromised even before he came to the throne: his father Reza Shah, an army general who seized power in the 1920s, was deposed by British and Soviet troops in 1941. His son was forced to flee in 1953 when Mohammed Mossadeq was elected prime minister, only to be restored by a CIA-run coup for which President Barack Obama has apologised. >>> Patrick Cockburn | Friday, june 19, 2009