Speaking on a television program on Thursday, Star daily columnist Ergun Babahan told an intriguing tale regarding the military and the media. The incident he spoke of involved Umur Talu, a columnist for the Sabah daily, and took place during the time when Fırtına -- who this week was detained and then released pending trial over alleged military plans to overthrow the government using various tactics, including interference with the media -- headed the Air Forces Command. According to Babahan, following the publication of Talu’s column, a colonel from the Special Forces Command came to the Sabah headquarters and issued serious threats to Kenan Tekdağ, who was then the media group’s president.
Tekdağ remained unmoved by the colonel’s threats, Babahan said, also drawing attention to the implication of incidents such as these to the current perception of alleged coup plans that have been surfacing in Turkey. In those times, it was normal for colonels to be so bold as to issue such threats. “They were so fearless, they could issue death threats to columnists. You know, there are issues being questioned, and some people ask, ‘How could they do this?’ We know full well how they could do this because they’ve done such things to our newspapers and colleagues,” he said.
Coup plotters who drew up a military takeover plan dubbed “Sledgehammer,” recently made public by a Turkish daily, conspired to arrest 36 journalists as soon as they staged a coup d’état, according to details included in the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan. Talu’s name was amongst the blacklisted journalists to be arrested, and Fırtına’s arrest on Monday came in connection with this plan.
