Boy pulled uninjured from Turkey's quake wreckage (AP)

ERCIS, Turkey – A 13-year-old boy was pulled from a collapsed building without injury on Friday, five days after Turkey's powerful earthquake struck, and state-run TV said he survived by drinking rain water that seeped through cracks in the wreckage around him.

The boy, Ferhat Tokay, also used shoes under his head as a pillow and peered through a tiny gap in the wreckage to see when it was day or night outside, his uncle said.

Tokay was discovered early Friday morning, soon after rescue workers from Azerbaijan had sent the uncle and other relatives away from the site to get some rest, saying there was no chance of finding the missing boy alive.

"He didn't even have a scratch on him!" the uncle, Sahin Tokay, told NTV television. "He was hungry on the first day, but the hunger pangs later disappeared."

The 7.2 magnitude quake leveled about 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 575 people and leaving about 2,500 injured and thousands of homeless.

Authorities say another 5,700 buildings are now unfit for habitation.

The government's crisis management center said 187 people have been freed from the rubble alive.

Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said search and rescue efforts were continuing "in small sections" of Ercis, the hardest-hit area. "Hopefully we will be successful in pulling out survivors there too," he told reporters.

But news from one of those sites was gloomy. Rescuers recovered the body of a missing father whose 2-week-old baby girl had been pulled alive from the rubble with her mother and grandmother on Tuesday.

Ferhat Tokay was working in a shoe shop on the ground floor of a multistory building in the town when the quake hit. State-run Anatolia news agency said he kept alive by drinking water that reached him in the wreckage during heavy rains.

Turkey is mostly Muslim, and in Ercis on Friday many people held traditional Muslim prayers outdoors, in parks or in streets strewn with rubble from the earthquake.

Others prayed in tents or in the few mosques still standing, Anatolia said.

One of them was the Seyid Muhammed mosque. Its only damage is a gaping crack at the foot of its minaret.

As men entered it to pray Friday, its imam, Selahattin Tasdemir, said: "It wouldn't have been considered a sin to not pray today because these people are victims and in a difficult situation."

"But their conscience wouldn't allow it. They're used to praying, so we prayed," he said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

The 213-person Azerbaijani rescue team that saved Tokay on Friday is equipped with sniffer dogs and it has saved nine other people from the wreckage since Sunday night.

On Thursday, the team pulled 18-year-old Imdat Padak from another destroyed building in Ercis. During that effort, rubble hit one of its sniffer dogs, Cip, while it was searching a narrow gap, seriously injuring its paws.

Meanwhile, aid workers delivered tents, prefabricated homes, blankets and heaters from a dozen other countries to the desolate and cold areas hit by the quake.

Survivors complained about a shortage of tents following the quake and the government acknowledged initial difficulties in sending aid. Officials also have said some aid trucks have been looted before reaching Ercis.

Sahin, the interior minister, said the shortage of tents had largely been overcome by Friday.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.

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Turkey's Gul says no crisis as top generals quit (Reuters)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Abdullah Gul denied on Saturday that Turkey faced a crisis after the resignation of the country's four most senior military commanders, but acknowledged this had created an "extraordinary" situation.

The departure of the generals has caused turmoil in the military, giving Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan an opportunity to extend his authority over the once-dominant armed forces, the second biggest in NATO.

Chief of General Staff General Isik Kosaner stepped down on Friday evening along with the army, navy and air force commanders in protest over the detention of 250 officers on charges of conspiring against Erdogan's government.

In a farewell message to "brothers in arms," Kosaner said it was impossible to continue in his job as he could not defend the rights of men who had been detained as a consequence of a flawed judicial process.

Relations between the secularist military and Erdogan's socially conservative Justice and Development Party (AK) have been fraught since it first won power in 2002, due to mistrust of the AK's Islamist roots.

While the departures are embarrassing, they could give Erdogan a decisive victory over a military that sees itself as guardian of the secularist state envisioned by the soldier statesman and founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Analysts perceive little political threat to Erdogan's supremacy. AK won a third consecutive term, taking 50 percent of the vote, in a parliamentary election in June.

"Nobody should view this as any sort of crisis or continuing problem in Turkey," Gul, a former top AK member, told reporters on Saturday. "Undoubtedly events yesterday were an extraordinary situation in themselves, but everything is on course."

Erdogan designated Kosaner's successor on Friday, as his office put out a statement naming paramilitary Gendarmerie commander General Necdet Ozel as new head of land forces and acting deputy chief of general staff, effectively making him next in line when Kosaner handed over the baton.

In years gone by, Turkey's generals were more likely to seize power than quit. They have staged three coups since 1960 and pushed an Islamist-led government from power in 1997.

Some founders of AK, including Erdogan, were members of the Welfare Party, an Islamist party whose coalition was forced out 14 years ago. But as prime minister, Erdogan has ended the military's dominance through a series of reforms aimed at advancing Turkey's chances of joining the European Union.

FOUR-STAR EARTHQUAKE

"Four-star earthquake," a headline in Sabah newspaper said of the generals' decision, while papers also highlighted Kosaner's criticism of media reporting on the military.

"They tried to create the impression that the Turkish Armed Forces were a criminal organization and ... the biased media encouraged this with all kinds of false stories, smears and allegations," Kosaner's statement said.

On Istanbul's streets, views of the issue reflected Turkey's polarization between government supporters and opponents.

"This is a move to place AK Party supporters in the army. There was only the army to protect secularism but they took that as well," said retired 54-year-old Perihan Guclu.

"This has been a good development. We have got one of the biggest numbers of generals in the world but we are becoming a democracy slowly," said a 52-year-old who gave his name only as

Dursun.

The latter-day subordination of the generals was starkly demonstrated last year when police began detaining scores of officers over "Operation Sledgehammer," an alleged plot against Erdogan's government discussed at a military seminar in 2003.

The officers say Sledgehammer was just a war game exercise and the evidence against them has been fabricated. About 250 military personnel are in jail, including 173 serving and 77 retired staff. Most are charged in relation to Sledgehammer.

MILITARY MORALE SAPPED

A court accepted on Friday an indictment over another alleged military plot, known as the "Internet Memorandum" case, and prosecutors asked for the arrest of 22 people including the Aegean army commander and six other serving generals and admirals.

Aksam newspaper described this as "the indictment which triggered a crisis" in a case where the military is accused of setting up anti-government websites. Papers said disagreements over senior appointments also prompted the generals to quit.

The detentions have sapped morale and spread mistrust and suspicion among the officer corps, and many had been looking for Kosaner to take a stand since his appointment last August.

More than 40 serving generals, almost a tenth of Turkey's commanders, are under arrest, accused of a various plots to bring down the AKP.

The main opposition CHP said the army should stay out of politics but warned against the AKP exploiting its power.

"It is not right to draw soldiers into politics but there is no benefit in vilifying, smearing or undermining their dignity day and night," senior CHP deputy Emine Tarhan told a news conference.

The government statement said the four commanders had retired and made no mention of the reasons why. It said a meeting of the Supreme Military Council, which meets twice-yearly to make top appointments, would go ahead as planned on Monday, showing Erdogan is in a hurry to restore the chain of command and present an image of business as usual.

The announcement dampened sentiment on Turkey's financial markets on Friday, weakening the lira and pushing bond yields higher over concerns about increased political risk.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Seda Sezer; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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