Turkey has detained 10 retired admirals over their public criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “crazy” Istanbul canal project, which will create a new waterway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean in addition to the existing Bosphorus strait.
The arrest warrants issued on Monday came a day after a group of 104 former senior navy officials signed an open letter warning that the proposed canal could harm Turkish security by invalidating an 85-year-old international treaty designed to prevent militarisation of the Black Sea.
The statement criticising the plan was met with fury from Turkish officials, who interpreted it as a direct challenge from the military to the civilian government, “echoing coup times”.
The Turkish military has long seen itself as the guarantor of the country’s secular constitution, staging three coups between 1960 and 1980. Erdoğan’s government also survived an attempted coup in July 2016, which it blamed on followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel, civil servants, lawyers and academics have been fired from their jobs or arrested in the past five years accused of links to the preacher.
“A group of retired soldiers are putting themselves into a laughable and miserable position with their statement that echoes military coup times,” the presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said on Twitter.
“The [group] should know that our esteemed nation and its representatives will never allow this mentality,” he added.
Erdoğan’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, said: “Not only those who signed but also those who encourage them will give an account before justice.”
The chief prosecutor’s office in Ankara has launched an investigation into the statement, according to the state news agency Anadolu, and four more people suspected of putting the statement together have been called to report to police within the next three days.
The proposed Istanbul canal is the most ambitious of dozens of what Erdoğan calls his “crazy” projects – large-scale infrastructure development projects that have come to define Turkey’s economic boom and bust during his 18 years in office.
Plans to in effect create a second Bosphorus were drawn up in 2011 and finally approved last month. The 28-mile (45km) passage is to be built west of the natural waterway in order to ease heavy traffic and reduce the risk of accidents on the existing strait.
To date, Turkish officials have insisted that the 1936 Montreux convention – which opened the Bosphorus to civilian shipping below a certain size and its Black Sea neighbours’ navies – will not apply to the new canal. In theory this means Turkey could in theory allow whatever vessels it likes passage to the Black Sea, including US warships, in effect militarising the Russian-dominated waters.
The £9.5bn canal plan was put on hold in 2018 when the Turkish lira crashed. Its reintroduction has prompted concern from critics who say it will wreak environmental havoc and that costs are likely to spiral.
“Montreux provided Turkey the possibility to maintain its neutrality during the second world war. We are of the opinion that there is a need to avoid any statements and actions that could cause the Montreux convention, an important treaty in terms of Turkey’s survival, to be brought up for discussion,” the statement from the retired navy personnel said.
The former admirals are suspected of conspiring against state security and constitutional order, according to the news website Habertürk.