ANKARA, 2 August 2007 — Turkey’s top military council began a four-day annual meeting yesterday to decide on the new commanders of the navy and air force and other promotions and retirements in the armed forces. The current commanders of the Navy, Adm. Yener Karahanoglu, and the air force, Gen. Faruk Comert, will retire.
The Supreme Military Council is expected to replace Karahanoglu with the navy’s second in command, Fleet Adm. Muzaffer Metin Atac, and name Gen. Aydogan Babaoglu, commander of the War Academies, as the new head of the air force, the Turkish press said.
The council is scheduled to discuss around 120 promotions in the upper echelons of the armed forces, as well as the expulsions of others on disciplinary grounds, including involvement in anti-secular religious activities or association with outlawed groups.
The council’s yearly meeting is chaired by the prime minister and is attended by the defense minister. Its decisions, which are subject to presidential approval, are irreversible and cannot be appealed.
Meanwhile, Turkey has lodged a complaint against Austria with the OSCE and is preparing to do the same at the UN after Vienna allowed a wanted Turkish Kurd rebel leader to travel to Iraq instead of extraditing him to Ankara, Turkish officials said yesterday.
“We have received no satisfactory explanation from Austria concerning the incident,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilman told reporters. “We have lodged a complaint before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe... We will soon lodge a complaint with the United Nations as well,” he said.
Asked whether Turkey could scale down its diplomatic and economic relations with Austria, Bilman said: “We are still assessing that.” The man at the center of the row is Riza Altun, a founding member and chief financial operator of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
Altun, who is wanted on an Interpol bulletin, emerged in Austria in July after fleeing France, where he was indicted in February for suspected terrorist activities and barred from leaving the Paris region. Ankara says the Austrian authorities were aware that Altun held fake identity documents and was involved in illegal activities, but still allowed him to board a plane for Iraq, where the PKK enjoys safe haven.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has described Austria’s attitude as “a very big mistake” that “erodes the foundations of the international struggle against terrorism.” Ankara is still awaiting a response from Baghdad on a request to extradite Altun, Bilman said.
Bilman also told reporters that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki will visit Turkey next week to discuss the safe haven that Kurd rebels enjoy in the Kurdish-run north of his country, officials said yesterday. Maliki will visit at the invitation of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “All aspects of bilateral ties, primarily security issues, will be discussed,” he said.
Last month, Turkey accused the forces of Massud Barzani, who heads northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, of providing the PKK with weapons, possibly including ammunition received from the United States.
