Turkey’s civilian and military leaders met on Monday as police searched a key unit of the army’s special forces for a third day in an investigation into a suspected plot to assassinate the deputy prime minister.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan denied on Sunday that there were strains between his Islamist-rooted government and the military, a day after police detained eight soldiers during an initial search of the Special Forces’ Tactical Mobilization headquarters in Ankara.
A search of a military facility by civilians, in a country where the secularist armed forces have toppled four governments since 1960, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, and Turkish media said it was the first time police had dared take such action.
No charges have been laid in the case, which erupted on Dec. 19, when police first detained two officers after a guard at Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc’s residence reported seeing a car passing the house several times.
The two men, a major and a colonel, were subsequently released, but some reports say they were among the eight soldiers detained on Saturday.
Arinc reiterated on Monday that he did not believe he was the target of an assassination plot.
“Naturally this incident should not be thought of as an assassination attempt. Yes, newspapers have covered it like this, but there was no direct act with a weapon,” Arinc said in comments carried by CNN Turk’s Web site. “However, there is evidence that individuals were detected with possible bad intentions.”
State Prosecutor Mustafa Bilgili accompanied police on Monday during the search of special forces’ offices, CNN Turk said.
The National Security Council meets once every two months, but Monday’s meeting was cast against mounting uncertainty over the state of relations between the AK Party and the military, long regarded as the guardian of Turkey’s secular Constitution.
“We will continue to fight with determination against terrorism and the atmosphere that cultivates it, which target our nation’s integrity and our citizens’ unity and peace,” a statement from the council said, without elaborating.
Arinc is a member of the National Security Council, chaired by President Abdullah Gul.
Erdogan already met with Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug on Saturday, his second meeting in three days. The military said in a statement on Thursday that the two officers, when they were first picked up, had been part of an operation to monitor a fellow officer who lived near Arinc and had been suspected of leaking information.
Some Turks believe the government and elements in the military and civil service engage in dirty tricks to discredit each other. Opposition politicians have accused the AK Party of whipping up scares to gain sympathy ahead of an election due mid-2011.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
RSS