Turkey Purges NATO Cadres After Coup Attempt

Turkey has fired hundreds of its senior military – representatives at NATO both in Europe and the USA after the unsuccessful coup attempt on July 15, showed documents to which Reuters has secured access.

This means that the subsequent purge has affected some of the most  well-prepared cadres in the army.

According to a classified military communiqué, on September 27, Ankara ordered 149 military staff at the NATO quarters in Germany, Holland, Belgium and the UK to return to Turkey within 3 days.

After their return, most of them were fired, arrested and jailed – according to a Turkish representative in NATO and two e-mails by the military affected sent to their colleagues in the alliance after their forceful departure.

One of the letters mentions “a witch hunt” among senior military staff working abroad.

Reuters data shows that a total of 400 cadres have already been fired.

Despite the fact that this is an insignificant part of the over 100,000 military, education, judicial and police employees who lost their job on suspicions of being part of the organisation of Fethullah Gulen, the decision to fire some of the most qualified military officers in elite international organisations shows the extent of the purge initiated by President Erdogan.

According to Turkish officials, the large-scale lay-offs, which enjoy popular support inside the country, are justified due to the actions of the military who tried to force the government from power on July 15. These events led to the death of over 240 people most of whom were civilians.

Ankara is an important ally of the West in the fight against Islamic State and in managing the migrant flood.

Turkey is one of the countries with the largest contribution in sending military personnel to train the local army in Afghanistan under NATO programmes. It is the country with the second largest army in the alliance after the USA.