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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Days after a reshuffle of Turkey's top military commanders, President Tayyip Erdogan has revived warnings of military action against Kurdish fighters in Syria that could set back the U.S.-led battle against Islamic State.

Kurdish militia are spearheading an assault against the hardline militants in their Syrian stronghold Raqqa, from where Islamic State has planned attacks around the world for the past three years.

But U.S. backing for the Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria has infuriated Turkey, which views their growing battlefield strength as a security threat due to a decades-old insurgency by the Kurdish PKK within in its borders.

There have been regular exchanges of rocket and artillery fire in recent weeks between Turkish forces and YPG fighters who control part of Syria's northwestern border.

Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO after the United States, reinforced that section of the border at the weekend with artillery and tanks and Erdogan said Turkey was ready to take action.

"We will not leave the separatist organization in peace in both Iraq and Syria," Erdogan said in a speech on Saturday in the eastern town of Malatya, referring to the YPG in Syria and PKK bases in Iraq. "We know that if we do not drain the swamp, we cannot get rid of flies."

The YPG denies Turkish allegations of links with Kurdish militants inside Turkey, saying it is only interested in self-rule in Syria and warning that any Turkish assault will draw its fighters away from the battle against Islamic State which they are waging in an alliance with local Arab forces.

Erdogan's comments follow the appointment of three new leaders of Turkey's army, air force and navy last week - moves which analysts and officials said were at least partly aimed at preparing for any campaign against the YPG militia.

Turkish forces swept into north Syria last year to seize territory from Islamic State, while also cutting off Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria from the Kurdish pocket of Afrin further west. They thereby prevented Kurdish control over almost the whole sweep of the border - Ankara's worst-case scenario.

Recent clashes have centered around the Arab towns of Tal Rifaat and Minnigh, near Afrin, which are held by the Kurdish YPG and allied fighters.

Erdogan said Turkey's military incursion last year dealt a blow to "terrorist projects" in the region and promised further action. "We will make new and important moves soon," he said.

His comments follow weeks of warnings from Turkey of possible military action against the YPG.

Washington's concern to prevent any confrontation which deflects the Kurdish forces attacking Raqqa may help stay Ankara's hand, but a Turkish government source said last week's changes in military leadership have prepared the ground.

"With this new structure, some steps will be taken to be more active in the struggle against terror," the source said. "A structure that acts according to the realities of the region will be formed".

The battle for Raqqa has been underway since June, and a senior U.S. official said on Friday that 2,000 Islamic State fighters are believed to be still defending positions and "fighting for every last block" in the city.

Even after the recapture of Raqqa, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has left open the possibility of longer-term American assistance to the YPG.

The influence of Turkey's once-dominant military has decreased dramatically since Erdogan came to power nearly 15 years ago. A purge in senior ranks since last year's failed military coup has stripped it of 40 percent of top officers.

Last Wednesday's appointments were issued by the Supreme Military Council, a body which despite its name is now dominated by politicians loyal to Erdogan.

"Of course the political will is behind these decisions, Erdogan's preferences are behind them," the source said. "But the restructuring of the Turkish Armed Forces and the demand for a more active fight against the PKK and Islamic State also has a role".

Vacancies in senior military ranks resulting from the year-long purge would not be filled immediately, he said, but would be addressed over time.

While all three forces - air, land and sea - are under new command, focus has centered on the new army chief Yasar Guler. As head of Turkey's gendarmerie, he was seen to take a tough line against the PKK and the movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen blamed by the government for the July 2016 coup attempt.

Ankara considers the YPG an extension of the PKK, which is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

Can Kasapoglu, a defense analyst at the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), said the YPG "remains at the epicenter of Turkey's threat perception".

Guler was well-placed to address Turkey's "transnational counter-terrorism priorities" and lead the campaign against Kurdish forces because of his past roles as chief of military intelligence, head of gendarmerie and postings to NATO.

"There is an undeniable likelihood that Turkey's new top military chain of command might have to lead a major campaign against the YPG," Kasapoglu said.

Guler is now favorite to take over from the overall head of the Turkish armed forces, General Hulusi Akar, who is due to step down in two years.

"Guler gets on well with members of Erdogan's AK Party and is known for his hardline performance against the PKK...and the Gulen movement," said Metin Gurcan an independent security analyst and retired Turkish military officer who now writes a column for Al-Monitor news website.

For the president, who faces a re-election campaign in 2019, a smooth succession from Akar to Guler would avoid any military upheaval which could send his plans off-course, Gurcan said.

"Until 2023, Erdogan should have smooth sailing without disruption from the Turkish armed forces."

Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz and Dirimcan Barut in Ankara; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Read more:
After military shake-up, Erdogan says Turkey to tackle Kurds in Syria - Reuters

This picture taken and released on July 25, 2017 by Turkey's Presidential Press Service shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressing the AK Party's group meeting at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) in Ankara. (Photos by AFP)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned of upcoming operations on Syrian soil after the country bolsters its military presence on the border with its war-torn neighbor.

We are determined to extend the dagger we have put into the heart of the terror entity project through the Euphrates Shield Operation with new moves, he said while addressing a crowd in the city of Malatyaon Saturday.

In August 2016, Turkeybegan a unilateral military intervention in northern Syria, code-named Operation Euphrates Shield,sending tanks and warplanes across the border. Ankara claimed that its military campaign was aimed at pushing the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group from Turkey's border with Syria and stopping the advance of Kurdish forces, who were themselves fighting Daesh, but Damascus denounced the operation as a breach of its sovereignty.

In March, Turkey announced that the operation had ended successfully. During the operations Turkey-backed Syrian militant groups and the Turkish military cleared an area in northern Syria of Daesh and prevented the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) from conjoining its territories.

The YPG is part of a larger coalition of fighters the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which has been engaged in operations aimed at liberating Raqqah.

Ankara has on multiple occasions expressed its deep concern about the advancement of YPG forces in northern Syria.

We would rather pay the price for spoiling plans against our future and liberty in Syria and Iraq rather than on our own soilSoon we will take new and important steps, Erdogan added.

Erdogans announcement was made hours after the Turkish military reinforced its presence in the other side of the barbed wire border with Syria by deploying a six-vehicle convoy that included tanks and howitzers to the southernprovince of Kilis.

Continue reading here:
New operations on Syrian soil imminent: Erdogan - Press TV

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is dismissing claims that Kurds are not represented in the Justice and Development Party (AKP)-dominated government.

As examples Erdogan offered that government spokesperson Bekir [Bozdag] is a Kurd and MP from Yozgat, as well as the assistant to the prime minister Mohammed Shimshak, elected MP from Gaziantep but originally from Batman.

Erdogan added that presidential advisor Aisha Turkmanoghlo is also a Kurd too, saying not to look at her name which contains Turkmen.

Twelve Peoples Democratic Paty (HDP) MPs, including the leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, are currently imprisoned. The pro-Kurdish party won 59 seats in the November 2015 vote.

Two pro-Kurdish lawmakers were stripped of their status in the Turkish parliament on Thursday on the grounds of absenteeism, missing meetings of the general assembly. Four of their members have now been stripped of their status, leaving the party with 55 seats.

International human rights organizations have reported that Erdogan is using last summers failed coup to target political opposition.

Most of the HDP members arrested have been charged with affiliation or support for the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an allegation the party denies.

Read more:
Erdogan: Kurds are represented in Turkish government, party - Rudaw

Turkish authorities would require the suspects two wear two kinds of uniforms a brown jumpsuit for "coup plotters" and jackets and trousers in the same color for "terrorists," Erdogan said at a rally in the city of Malatya on Saturday.

"From now on, there is no coming dressed as they want," the Turkish strongman told his supporters at a stadium opening ceremony.

"They will be introduced to the world like that," he added, describing the color of the uniform as "almond."

Read more: Main coup trial begins in Turkey against nearly 500 suspects

'Hero' or villain

The new dress code comes in response to a controversy last month, when one of the defendants showed up in an Ankara court wearing a T-shirt with the word "Hero" on it. The images of the suspect triggered outrage on social media, with users claiming the shirt insulted the 249 victims of the failed coup in 2016. However, dozens of people were subsequently detained by the police for wearing similar T-shirts. Onone occasion, police chased down a young couple riding a motorbike after they noticed their "Hero" shirts.

Commenting on the Ankara incident in July, Erdogan saidthat suspects for coup-related crimes should wear uniforms "like in Guantanamo," referring to the infamous US military prison that dresses their inmates in bright orange jumpsuits. At least 50,000 people have been detained in the crackdown after the coup attempt.

dj/bw(Reuters, dpa, AP, AFP)

Continue reading here:
Turkey's Erdogan wants uniforms for coup suspects in court - Deutsche Welle

Mehmet Gormez, the head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate, addresses the media in Ankara, Turkey, Jan. 8, 2015.(photo byREUTERS/Umit Bektas)

Author:Mustafa Akyol Posted August 4, 2017

On June 31, Mehmet Gormez, a Turkish cleric who headed the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government department that runs more than 85,000 mosques, bid farewell to his post he had occupied since 2010. Gormezs term didnt end until 2020, which is why his early departure triggered a heated discussion in the media and on social media. As with most other changes in the state bureaucracy, many people believed that the departure of the erudite theologian had something to do with President Recep Tayyip Erdogans plans to single-handedly build a NewTurkey."

A few facts about the Diyanet: It is a government body whose budget exceeds many key government ministries, such as the Foreign Ministry, and whose influence over society is significant. Created back in Mustafa Kemal Ataturks time (1923-1938) as a key institution of the Turkish Republic, the Diyanet has always controlled all mosques in Turkey, paying the salaries of the imams and also supervising the content of their sermons. Since the 1960s, its influence even spread to Europe, as it opened hundreds of mosques in countries like Germany with substantial Turkish immigrant communities.

The Diyanet itself is governed by top-down dictates of the state. The head of the institution is appointed by the president and can be changed at will. Various Diyanet heads have been dismissed throughout the past century when they failed to comply with the instructions of the government. This hierarchical structure is one of the reasons why Turkeys self-styled secularism does not imply a wall separating between the state and religion. It rather implies the states total control over religion.

The Diyanets story with Mehmet Gormez, who was an academic theologian before becoming a cleric, began in 2003when he was made deputy president by the organizations then newly appointed head, Ali Bardakoglu, another academic-turned-cleric. Both Bardakoglu and Gormez came from the more reformist strain within Turkeys pool of theologians, holding the conviction that Muslimhood needs a renewal in the modern age. One step toward that goal was the Hadith Project, which revised and contextualized the medieval collections of the sayings of Prophet Muhammad. The project began in 2008 under the leadership of Gormez and was completed five years later.

In 2010, the Erdogan government replaced Bardakoglu with Gormez for reasons that remained unclear. In the next seven years, Gormez becamequite an active Diyanet head, with public appearances both in Turkey and abroad. He delivered the first sermon in Turkey in the Kurdish language, and he also gave the first sermon by a Turkish scholar at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He launched a scholarly refutation of the Islamic State, criticized the conservatives who did not want women and children in the mosques, and mobilized the public announcement systems of minarets against the military coup attempt on the fateful night of July 15, 2016.

In the eyes of most people in the Turkish opposition, Gormez was just another pillar of the Erdogan regime. In the eyes of the staunchest defenders of the same regime, however, Gormez was just not staunch and not obedient enough. This became evident earlier this year, when daily Turkiye, a pro-Islamic newspaper that lately has become one of the bastions of the most ferocious Erdoganists, began slamming Gormez for being soft on the Gulenists, which amounts to the ultimate political heresy in todays Turkey.

Al-Monitor sources in Ankara suggested that the campaign against Gormez was spearheaded by the notorious Pelicanists. The term comes from the mysterious Pelican Brief blog, which was the trigger to the ousting of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu back in May 2016. Since then, Pelicanists has become the code word for the hard-core Erdoganists who lash out against not only the critics of Erdogan but also his softer supporters who supposedly show signs of treason. They want to replace the people with 98% loyalty, as an insider once told me, with people with 110% loyalty.

A few articles in the Turkish media also offered the same explanation for Gormezs departure, which was apparently based not on his own request, as it was officially announced, but on a decision from the very top. One article was by Hakan Albayrak, an Islamist writer who is supportive of the government but who also has the rare spine to criticize it. Gormez was dismissed, he wrote in his column in daily Karar, because he did not take certain steps without consulting the commission of scholars. Because of this, Albayrak added, Gormez was ultimately found not very fit for practical use.

It seems that Gormez was also dismissed because his views on Islam were found to be too reformist and modernist compared to the more rigid and conservative circles that are becoming growingly assertive in the New Turkey. A famous voice from this conservative camp, a fiery preacher named Ahmet Mahmut Unlu, condemned Gormez as the worst head of the Diyanet ever and expressed the hope that he would be replaced with someone loyal to Ahl al-Sunna. The term is the Arabic word for Sunni Islam, and it is used in Turkey often to designate a pure, unreformed form of it. Other conservative Islamist figures shared this point of view in social media and vowed that the new head of the directorate must be a defender of Ahl al-Sunna.

At this point, it is actually not clear who will replace Gormez as the head of the Diyanet. What matters, however, is not just the leader but the very mission of the institution. In his noteworthy farewell speech, Gormez pointed to this issue. It must be decided, he said, Whether this deep-rooted institution is a purely bureaucratic body or whether it represents the scholarship tradition that guides our religious-spiritual life. And there are few reasons today to think that the powers that be prefer anything other than a purely bureaucratic body.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/08/turkey-why-erdogan-dismiss-top-cleric.html

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Why Erdogan fired Turkey's top cleric - Al-Monitor