[Event of the week] Dörtyol turns into battlefield after four police officers are killed

Tensions escalated in the city shortly after the attack. Some residents who heard that a number of suspects had been detained after the attack gathered in front of the Dörtyol Police Station, demanding that the suspects be handed over to them.

The group, which continued to grow, ignored calls from officials and police officers to disperse. Members of the group described themselves as idealist, nationalist youths associated with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The group then marched to the district BDP office and set fire to the fourth floor of the building where the BDP office was located. The crowd watched the building burn and chanted slogans against the terrorist PKK.

Security officials said the locals were provoked as young people were encouraged to take to the streets via SMS messages and phone calls.

Tension remained high on Thursday in Dörtyol when a BDP convoy attempted to enter the district to examine the situation firsthand following several days of conflict. The BDP convoy carrying BDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş and some BDP deputies had set out from Diyarbakır to inspect the situation in Dörtyol. The news of an approaching BDP convoy was sufficient to raise the already high tension in the district.

Many residents gathered in the city center to protest the arrival of the BDP convoy. Due to the increasing tension in the city, the Hatay Governor’s Office released a statement announcing the decision to deny the BDP convoy entry to the district due to obvious concerns. The BDP convoy was then stopped at the Erzin exit of the Adana-İskenderun highway.

July 24 Saturday

* Despite uncertainty as to the sincerity of the main opposition party’s call for the abolishment of an article that is believed to be the main justification of the military to stage coups, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) vowed to take the steps necessary to annul the article. Article 35 of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) Internal Service Code effectively paves the way for the military to intervene in domestic affairs under certain circumstances by way of instigating a coup. Addressing a rally in the southeastern province of Bingöl on Saturday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed setting up a commission to consider abolishing the article and invited Parliament -- which is currently on summer break -- to hold an extraordinary session to remove the article.

* Four people died and two were injured after a scaffolding collapsed at a shipyard in the northwestern province of Zonguldak. The scaffolding had been erected to aid in the construction of a ship in the Ereğli district of Zonguldak. Şenol Tönen, Osman Yüksel and Mehmet Coşkun were trapped under the collapsed scaffolding and died at the scene, while Tuncay Güner was critically injured and later died at Ereğli’s Echomar Hospital.

July 25 Sunday

* Fernando Alonso led Ferrari to a one-two finish in the German Grand Prix on Sunday after denying Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa an emotional victory one year on from a near-fatal crash.

* Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Hakkı Suha Okay announced that they would refer party member Mehmet Şerif Memioğlu, the mayor of Yedisu, in Bingöl province, to the party’s disciplinary committee after Memioğlu said he was going to vote “yes” in a referendum scheduled for Sept. 12.

* The famous bill known as the “stone-throwing children bill,” which eases the sentencing of minors accused of fighting with security forces, came into effect on Sunday.

* A quarrel in a small coffeehouse in İnegöl, Bursa province, turned bloody when three men armed with knives and sticks attacked several people. The three men, Mehmet Şerif S. (23), Mehmet S. (31) and Şenol S. (25), entered a coffeehouse in İnegöl’s Orhaniye district and four people were injured in the ensuing quarrel. Those wounded in the altercation were hospitalized, and the three assailants as well as several others believed to have started riots in the town were detained. Locals said the quarrel was a result of animosity between two families, one of them from southeastern Turkey.

* Nine people died and four were injured in a traffic accident in the northwestern province of Sakarya when a minibus collided with a tractor-trailer.

July 26 Monday

* The Bugün daily published the transcript of phone conversations between two air forces officers who discussed shooting down Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in order to protect terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

* In what could be seen as the first concrete outcome of the government’s democratic initiative, nearly 50 minors charged under anti-terrorism laws were released from prison after a new law came into effect on Sunday. The law introduces restrictions on sentences handed down to minors arrested for throwing stones at security forces during demonstrations in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast.

* Four officers were killed in a terrorist attack on a police vehicle in Hatay’s Dörtyol district, adding to already high tensions in the area, while a nationalist group set ablaze the district’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party’s (BDP) office and chanted slogans against the terrorist PKK.

July 27 Tuesday

* In a speech in Ankara, British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to fight for Turkey to have its place in the European Union and warned opponents of Turkish membership against shutting Ankara out of the European bloc. “This is something I feel very strongly, very passionately about,” said Cameron, on his first visit to Turkey since becoming prime minister in May. His comments were made during a speech to the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), an influential business group. “Together, I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels,” he added.

* CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdroğlu alleged that Prime Minister Erdoğan and former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt collaborated on the release of a memorandum against the government in 2007, which he said served as a kiss of life for the ruling AK Party in the general elections of the same year.

* İsmail Çelik, who punched the leader of the now-defunct Democratic Society Party (DTP), Ahmet Türk, in the face in April, was sentenced to 11 months, 20 days in prison, which was later commuted to a fine of TL 7,000. Çelik, who was released pending trial last month by the Samsun Criminal Court of 4th Instance, was sentenced on charges of assault with the intent to cause injury.

* CHP, whose leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, last week called on the government to abolish an article that served as a basis for coup perpetrators, announced its own proposal on Tuesday, which does not abolish but partially amends the article. CHP Deputy Chairman Hakkı Süha Okay said the party’s Central Executive Board (MYK) decided to propose a partial amendment to Article 35 of the TSK Internal Service Code rather than its abolishment.

July 28 Wednesday

* An İstanbul court rejected more than 30 requests for new judges in the Sledgehammer case, in which many retired and active duty officers stand accused of having plotted to crash Turkish jets and bomb mosques in a bid to undermine the government and eventually stage a coup d’état. Suspects’ lawyers on Tuesday appealed arrest warrants issued by the İstanbul 10th High Criminal Court late last Friday for 102 of the suspects. At least 90 petitions against the warrants were filed, while at least 30 suspects requested that new judges be assigned to the Sledgehammer trial. None of the suspects have so far turned themselves in.

* A voice recording made public revealed that the TSK launched a fundraising campaign for officers facing trial as suspects in the Sledgehammer plot. The voice in the scandalous recording says at one point, “Unfortunately the political circumstances are against us.”

* Germany reiterated its position that it wants Turkey to be bound to Europe but added that it is not yet ready for EU membership. “Turkey’s direction is Europe. We place great importance on deepening mutual ties and binding Turkey to Europe,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told a joint news conference after breakfast with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoğlu, in İstanbul.

* Interior Minister Beşir Atalay said a violent quarrel in the city of İnegöl in Bursa province on Sunday was neither politically nor ideologically motivated, underlining that it was a spontaneous incident rather than a planned one.

* Investigations revealed that hundreds of hand grenades seized from a truck in Ankara earlier this year and the grenades and explosives confiscated during the Ergenekon investigation have successive serial numbers. On March 10, police in the capital were alerted by a whistleblower about a civilian truck filled with weapons and around 900 hand grenades. The truck was stopped by Ankara police in Ümitköy while en route to the Special Forces Command in Ankara’s Gölbaşı district.

July 29 Thursday

* A polemic sparked by main opposition CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu, who alleged that Prime Minister Erdoğan and former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt collaborated on the release of a memorandum against the government in 2007, flared up after the former ex-military chief took the argument as an insult. Büyükanıt responded to Kılıçdaroğlu’s allegation in an interview with the Milliyet daily’s Fikret Bila. Stating that the CHP leader’s claims are “fiction,” Büyükanıt denied the allegation. “I see these remarks, which are not based on any facts or documents, as a baseless insult against me as someone who wore the uniform for 53 years. I condemn and reject these claims,” the former military chief said.

* Somali pirates released a Turkish freighter, the MV Frigia, four months after the vessel was hijacked, with all 21 crewmembers reported to be safe and healthy, a lawyer for the ship’s operator said. The Maltese-flagged cargo ship was seized off the Indian coast with a crew of 19 Turks and two Ukrainians on March 23.

* Tension remained high in the Dörtyol district of Hatay province, the location of a deadly terrorist attack earlier this week, as a pro-Kurdish BDP convoy attempted to enter the district to examine the situation firsthand following several days of conflict.

* The CHP submitted its proposal amending Article 35 of the TSK Internal Service Code, which has served as the legal basis for coup perpetrators, to Parliament. The proposal reads: “The duty of the TSK is to protect the Turkish motherland and the Turkish Republic as defined in the Constitution within the framework of the functionality of the parliamentary democratic system and the Constitution.”

July 30 Friday

* A report prepared by the Labor Ministry into an explosion in Zonguldak’s Karadon mine that left 30 miners dead revealed that the absence of an engineer who went to the restroom caused the explosion, due to the engineer’s failure to issue a mandatory warning about a rise in the level of methane gas in the mine. The Labor Ministry prepared a 36-page inspection report into the explosion, which plunged the entire nation into grief on May 17.