Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul has approved the sackings of seven military personnel suspected of Islamist leanings, the military General Staff said, in a move that may help ease secularist reservations about him. Every year, the staunchly secular military expels a few officers for “reactionary” or Islamist tendencies.
But this year, some commentators speculated that Gul, himself a former Islamist, might refuse to approve the expulsions as he did when he was briefly prime minister. “The Supreme Military Council decided with majority vote to expel seven personnel with reactionary attitude and behaviour,” the army said in a statement posted on its Web site late on Friday.
The decision to expel the soldiers came after a two-day meeting of the Supreme Military Council chaired by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Gul, as commander in chief of the armed forces, was required to sign off on the expulsions.