Chief Of Staff Meets With Newspapers Of His Choice

Chief of Staff Four-Star General İlker Başbuğ met with the chief editors and Ankara representatives of the various newspapers in what the military named Communication Meeting.

“Kandıra visit [of the imprisoned Ergenekon generals] was for humane reasons”

Commenting about the meeting, Ergun Babahan, chief editor of the newspaper Sabah, said that the Chief of Staff talked about how they were very close to destroying the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the steps that needed to be taken to finish the operation and how worried he was about the fact that the organization was still getting new blood.

According to Babahan, Başbuğ stated that the number of people in PKK in 1990 is about  same as today; mostly young people from the West and Syria were joining their ranks. He did not bring up the question of pardoning the PKK guerillas. He said their collaboration with the USA was to continue. He also gave some messages about the Kurdish administration in Northern Iraq. He stated that Turkey was successful in handling the Georgian crises.

Ergin: I asked him about the April 27 manifesto

Sedat Ergin, chief editor of the newspaper Milliyet, told that they had asked the Chief of Staff what their accreditation criteria regarding the newspapers were, since the newspapers Zaman, Bugün, Vakit, Taraf, Birgün and Evrensel were not invited to the meeting. Başbuğ replied by stating that they did not have accreditation criteria, they simply used the journalism principles of the Journalists Association and the Press Council.

He also said that they were going to start giving weekly press briefings and keeping a contact point that will be prepared to give information to the journalists around the clock.

Başbuğ also stated that nobody and no institution should do politics using the armed forces; they should not be pulled into the daily incidents. However, when he was asked what he thought about the April 27 Manifesto by the military, his reply was he could not talk about this, since it was a decision taken by the Chief of Staff at the time.

Selvi from Yeni Şafak: We were met with love

Abdülkadir Selvi, chief editor of the newspaper Yeni Şafak, said that the Chief of Staff talked about accreditation practice meant to keep some newspapers away from the meetings of the armed forces. He also mentioned that they were met with love, which, according to him, points out to a normalization process between the armed forces and the newspapers. Selvi said they would be willing to contribute to this process. (EÖ/TK)