The clash between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the secular Kemalist military, accused by the president of having attempted to inspire a "political coup", resurfaces in Turkey.
Police arrested 10 former Ankara Navy admirals accused of "attacking the constitutional order".
Another 4 were forced to report to the police station within 72 hours, but not detained given their advanced age.
It all started with a public declaration, signed by 104 retired admirals, released over the weekend to denounce the risks of a possible withdrawal from the Montreux Convention, signed in 1936 to regulate ship traffic in the Turkish straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which they connect the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean.
The treaty, which guarantees the circulation of merchant ships and limits that of military ships, had been questioned after the green light was given to the 'Kanal Istanbul', the 45 km long artificial canal to be excavated on the European side of the metropolis, parallel to the Bosphorus. , imposing a diversion of maritime traffic.
A project announced a decade ago by Erdogan himself, then prime minister, who called it "crazy".
But for the head of state, today's criticisms of the retired military are "allusions to a coup", which cannot fall within the scope of "freedom of expression" and are "unacceptable in a country whose past is full of coups d'etat ", less than five years after the failed putsch against Erdogan himself, attributed to his former allies in the Fethullah Gulen network.
The clash returns to the fore on the eve of the delicate visit to Ankara by the presidents of the Commission and the EU Council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, who in the shadow of Erdogan's umpteenth squeeze will have to face the hottest dossiers, from migrants to the Mediterranean .
