Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announces change
days after nearly 500 defendants appeared in court in mass trial of putsch
suspects
Suspects on
trial over last year’s coup attempt in Turkey will wear a brown uniform during
their hearings, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced, after a controversy over a
defendant wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “hero” during a court
appearance.
The Turkish
president made his announcement during a speech in the city of Malatya, days
after nearly 500 defendants, including top generals and officers, appeared in
court. It was the largest mass trial of suspects accused of masterminding and
carrying out the attempted putsch last July, in which 250 people were killed
and 1,400 wounded.
“There will
be no more coming to courts wearing whatever they want,” Erdoğan said,
according to the daily newspaper Hürriyet. “They will be introduced to the
world like that.”
A suspect
accused of belonging to the Fethullah Gülen movement, which is widely believed
in Turkey to have masterminded the coup attempt and is led by an exiled
preacher in the United States, wore the “hero” T-shirt to his hearing.
Several
people were detained afterwards for wearing the same shirt. At a rally on the
anniversary of the coup last month, Erdoğan had called for the suspects to be
dressed in orange jumpsuits like those worn by people incarcerated in the US
prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Tens of
thousands of people have been dismissed from their jobs or detained over
alleged links to the Gülen movement in the months since the failed coup, and
trials are ongoing for many of the top military officers and civilians accused
by prosecutors of leading the putsch. The broad crackdown has gone beyond the
alleged perpetrators, however, and has ensnared journalists, academics, judges
and civil servants.
Turkey has
yet to come to terms with the coup attempt. The country has grown more
polarised in recent months as fears grow over Erdoğan’s consolidation of power.
A referendum that vastly expanded his powers was narrowly approved in April
ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections expected in 2019.
*The Guardian*
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