The arrest of Aydin Engin, Turkish journalist, playwright, writer, politician, in the raid of 12 leading staff of Cumhuriyet. November 1, 2016.“Is Brussels asleep, or just ignorant?, asked the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt in an op-ed in Politico, lambasting European leaders’ “tepid response” to the failed July 15 coup in Turkey. “It took some time for the EU to condemn the events”, wrote Bildt; instead, “Europe’s leaders immediately began to question measures taken by the Turkish authorities to cleanse from power any elements thought to be associated with the Gülen movement”.
For him, there was “no question that Turkey has the right to, and indeed must, take measures to safeguard itself against forces trying to topple its constitutional order.” Of course, “there is a severe risk these measures will go too far”, but the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights could assess this when things calm down. In any case, “it is hard to know at this stage if the government is casting the net too wide or not wide enough, but erring in either direction will only create new problems”.
This is also the main thrust of a report published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Carl Bildt co-chairs. Penned by the Senior Policy Fellow Aslı Aydıntaşbaş and dubbed “by far the best you can find on the Gülenist movement and its dangerous role in Turkey” by Bildt, the report takes the official narrative for granted and claims that the coup was indeed the Gülenist officers’ doing – turning a blind eye to the many inconsistencies, indeed contradictions, in the statements of the captured putschists and the factual loopholes in the narrative which have led many observers to argue that what transpired on this fateful night was much more complicated than the AKP government would have us believe.
