Ankara - The Turkish army has stepped up pressure on the civilian political establishment to approve a controversial proposal to purge Islamist or "separatist" civil servants, Michael Jansen reports.
In an interview published yesterday in the daily Hurriyet on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of Turkey's victory in its war of independence, the chief of staff, Gen Huseyin Kivrikoglu, said: "There are thousands of civil servants who . . . are working against the state every day in order to overthrow it. They have spread everywhere."
The military, which sees itself as the guarantor of the modern state, has carried out three armed coups since 1960 and a "white coup" against the Islamist government of Mr Necmettin Erbakan in 1997. Over the past three months the Prime Minister, Mr Bulent Ecevit, failed twice to persuade President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to approve a decree.