The retired admiral behind Turkey’s so-called Blue Homeland doctrine, which lays claim to expansive territorial waters in the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black seas, dismissed accusations that he and other retired naval officers were threatening a coup, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported on Sunday.
Cem Gürdeniz, who served as head of the Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters as a rear admiral, spoke to the newspaper in an interview prior to his arrest on Monday for lending his name to a letter penned by 103 retired Turkish admirals. The letter was critical of any decision to abandon the 1936 Montreux Convention and what the authors saw as an “Islamisation’’ of the Turkish armed forces.
Gürdeniz said that he found both topics to be saddening and defended the letter as a continuation of the admirals interest in protecting the national interests.
“For years, we operated on Turkey’s interests and took ownership of the Blue Homeland (doctrine). As such, the statement made was to protect Turkey’s interests and the Blue Homeland,” he said.
The former admiral added that the letter should not be interpreted as a “coup attempt” as President Recep Tayyip Erodogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have called it after its publication.
Since the start of the republic in 1923, Turkey has seen civilian governments overthrown in three military coups. The latest attempt came in July 2016 when members of the armed forces connected to the movement of exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen failed to overthrow Erdogan. This prompted many purges aimed at other Gulenists within the Turkish military.
On Sunday, Ankara’s Public Prosecutor’s Office announced an investigation into the admirals’ letter on grounds of committing a crime against the constitution. The next day, Gurdeniz and nine other admirals were arrested and four more were ordered to report to police because of their advanced age in the coming days instead of being detained.
Gürdeniz was previously arrested as part of the controversial Ergenekon investigations into the Turkish military in 2008. He was later released after the case was dismissed several years later.
Beyond Erdoğan’s rejection of their letter, other Turkish politicians were dismissive of its ambigous warning about a “risk” to Turkey’s political survival. Several, including opposition leaders Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the secular People’s Republican Party (CHP) and Meral Aksener of the centre-right Iyi Party (IYIP) disagreed with the move to arrest the former admirals.
Gürdeniz said it was within his and his co-signatories’ right of freedom of expression to make their objections known.
“We have the freedom to make a statement and a grievance should not be created from this. It is a statement made and it is extremely wrong to interpret it as a ‘coup call,’” he told Cumhuriyet.