Secular officers feel abandoned by free-world alliance | News | The Times & The Sunday Times
Reduced to hiding at home or meeting in cafés, the Turkish officers purged from their jobs with Nato fear for their future and safety.
Based at the alliance’s headquarters in the Belgian capital or its strategic command in Mons, about 40 were given three days to leave their posts and return to Ankara. Those who did have been arrested; some have disappeared. President Erdogan has referred to them as “terrorist soldiers”. That appeared to make them fair game for Turkey’s MIT intelligence service. Those who remain feel abandoned by the military alliance that many have devoted their lives to as career officers who see themselves as secular and democratic.
It’s not just officers with Nato who have been purged. More than 100 Turkish military attachés in embassies across the world were placed under investigation this autumn and diplomats were ordered to carry out searches of the homes of purged attachés in Europe’s capitals. Thirteen military attachés were recalled to Ankara and told they would receive new postings as part of a post-coup shake-up of Turkey’s diplomatic corps. Three went back, from Rome, Cairo and Paris, and were invited to meetings in the ministry. When they arrived, police were waiting and arrests were made. Many of the ten remaining attachés are said to be claiming asylum.
In a farewell speech in Mons this week, one air force officer made a desperate plea. “Nato is supposed to be the alliance of the free world. Nato needs to take a stand, not only when appalling things happen on its borders, like in Ukraine or Syria, but also when they happen within the organisation,” he said.
Last week Nato sent letters to military staff asking them to return their diplomatic identification documents, leaving them the choice of trying to find work in Belgium, claiming asylum or returning to be imprisoned in Turkey.
All the officers have been repeatedly security vetted for sensitive military posts. “They know everything about us,” said a former major. “The idea we are Gulenist plotters is ridiculous.”
Earlier this week, General Curtis Scaparrotti, Nato’s supreme allied commander in Europe, was asked if he had suspicions that any of the officers were involved with the coup. “No,” he replied crisply. “These officers served well here in Nato.”