Turkish military presses govt for Islamist purge

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -- Turkey's influential military chief was quoted Thursday as saying thousands of militant Islamists were working to destroy the state and the government's prestige was at stake in combating the advance.

Chief of General Staff Huseyin Kivrikoglu's comments coincide with a crackdown on prominent Islamist figures in Turkey.

A prosecutor formally charged Muslim sect leader Fethullah Gulen Thursday with activities aimed at "replacing the secular state with one based on religious principles and forming an illegal organization in order to reach that goal."

Gulen, an influential preacher resident in the United States, faces a 10-year jail term.

The European Court of Human Rights Thursday rejected former Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's appeal to delay his one-year jail sentence, handed down in March. Erbakan, 74, was convicted of "inciting hatred" in a 1994 speech.

Kivrikoglu's remarks in the mainstream newspaper Hurriyet will likely increase pressure on parliament to approve government proposals for a purge of suspected Islamist radicals and sympathizers of Kurdish separatists from the civil service. "There are thousands of civil servants who want to destroy the state. They are working against the state every day in order to overthrow it," Hurriyet quoted Kivrikoglu as saying.

"They have spread everywhere... They have seeped into the judiciary," said the normally taciturn Kivrikoglu, speaking to Turkish journalists after Victory Day national holiday parades. Other newspapers carried similar comments.

The military has carried out three coups since 1960 and is widely regarded as the country's ultimate guarantee against the encroachment of Islamist radicalism or separatist subversion. Politicians ignore the military's warnings at their peril.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's three-party coalition has twice failed to win President Ahmet Necdet Sezer's approval for a government decree that would have instituted a purge of civil servants.

Sezer insists such a proposal must be approved by parliament after it reconvenes in October. Some fear that dissent among lawmakers over the purge could threaten the government plan.

Kivrikoglu urged party leaders to enforce strict discipline to ensure MPs voted for the legislation.

"This has become a matter of prestige for the government," said Kivrikoglu, adding the military would closely monitor the passage of the bill through parliament.

The proposed purge is part of a three-year secularist clampdown inspired by the army.

A court had earlier quashed an arrest warrant against Islamist Gulen, a move that clearly infuriated the military. "This is a situation that gives pause for thought," Kivrikoglu was quoted in one newspaper as saying.

September is expected to bring a final decision on the fate of the country's chief opposition party, Virtue, which stands accused in the Constitutional Court of forming a rallying point for Islamic militants.

Virtue's predecessor, Welfare, was banned in January 1998, months after a Welfare-led government was forced out of power in a campaign spearheaded by the military.

The modern Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman empire. Religion was formally banished from politics in sweeping reforms intended to anchor the country firmly in the West.

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