Turkey’s Defense Ministry has announced that some officers involved in a dispute over wearing badges bearing the photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, during a ceremony at a military academy have been temporarily suspended.
The Veryansın TV news website reported last week that an altercation took place among lieutenants at the Tuzla Infantry School Command in İstanbul when some of them refused to wear Atatürk badges at a ceremony on November 10 marking the 85th anniversary of Atatürk’s death and allegedly threw the badges on the ground.
The pro-government Yeni Şafak daily also covered the incident, using the term “lieutenant junta” in last week’s front-page headline and alleging that pious cadets were being blacklisted at the school.
Yeni Şafak alleged that a group of lieutenants organized and physically assaulted their pious colleagues following the ceremony, during which some officers did not wear Atatürk badges on their lapels, claiming a shortage of pins. The daily said the group used offensive language and later attacked the other officers in the barracks.
The officers who were assaulted filed a criminal complaint, leading to the launch of an investigation, Yeni Şafak reported.
The Defense Ministry released a written statement on Wednesday saying that an administrative investigation had been initiated in addition to the ongoing judicial investigation into the incident.
The Turkish military, which was once considered a bastion of secularism, frequently appears on the public agenda due to the use of religious discourse by some army officials, which many attribute to the influence of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).