Military shake-up and Turkey purges the dead as well as the living

Dead coup plotters denied funerals and prayers.

Chief of general staff General Hulusi Akar during a Supreme Military Council meeting in Ankara on July 28, 2016. Ali Unal / Associated Press

ISTANBUL // The purge following the failed coup in Turkey is not confined to the living. The dead are being punished too.

The municipality of Istanbul has created a“traitors’ cemetery’, specifically for the bodies of the coup plotters who died in the abortive coup on July 15.

A patch of land has been allocated at the back of a site earmarked for a new dog shelter and it already contains one unmarked grave. It is believed to hold themortal remains of Mehmet Krabekir, 34, a captain and father of two children. and he lies there because his mother refused to claim his body. He will eventually be joined by about 23 others.

“Passers-by will curse them,” said Kadir Topbas, the mayor of Istanbul. “May every passer-by curse them and let them not rest in their tombs.”

Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs issued a directive denying funeral prayers and services for those who died while trying to overthrow the government. Such prayers, it said, were intended for the faithful as an act of exoneration, “but these people, with the action they undertook, have disregarded not just individuals but also the law of an entire nation and therefore do not deserve exoneration from the faithful. Though the spot is not accessible to the public, it has already provoked fury.

“I wish we didn’t know those traitors were here. We don’t want them,” said Serhan Baturay, a 57-year-old volunteer at the dog shelter. “They shouldn’t be put near our dogs, they shouldn’t be anywhere in Turkey.”

In a radical shake-up of the armed forces, almost half the country’s generals were replaced on Thursday following a hastily-convened meeting of Turkey’s top military commanders. Out of 358 generals in the national military, the government ordered 149 be removed for suspected complicity in the coup.

The crackdown continues to widen with the closure of 16 television stations, 23 radio stations, 15 magazines, 29 publishing houses and 45 newspapers under the three-month state of emergency declared by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Arrest warrants for 89 journalists have also been issued.

* Associated Press