Kurtulmus said an extradition request will follow. Some local media outlets put the numbers of those dismissed or detained at some 50,000 people.
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Turkey has formally requested the extradition of cleric Fethullah Gulen from the United States, the Prime Minister said Tuesday, as the government widens its purge following a failed military coup over the weekend.
Among the deans, 1,176 are from state universities while 401 deans work at private foundation universities, Anadolu said.
But the White House and Kerry both issued strong statements during the attempted coup supporting the elected Turkish government.
Gulen strongly denies the government’s charges and has suggested that Friday’s attempted coup could have been staged, as a pretext for the Erdogan government to seize even more power. “We will present them with more evidence than they want”, Binali Yildirim told parliament.
Others believe the most plausible scenario may lie between the two theories: The attempted coup may have begun as an independent and organic movement, but in the hours or days before it was executed Erdogan was tipped off. He then allegedly allowed it to unfold in order to draw out his enemies.
But Dorothee Schmid, a specialist on Turkey at the French Institute for Foreign Relations (IFRI) Schmid said all would now not be plain sailing for Erdogan who was leading a deeply polarised country where confidence in the political process has sunk.
Sweeping purges in the aftermath of the thwarted coup has seen the dismissal of thousands from the judiciary, police force, military and bureaucracy.
“I’m sorry but this parallel terrorist organisation will no longer be an effective pawn for any country”, Mr Yildirim said. “We will dig them up by their roots so that no clandestine terrorist organization will have the nerve to betray our blessed people again”. The army general staff said it would punish “in the most severe way” any members of the armed forces responsible for what it called “this disgrace”, adding that most had nothing to do with the coup.
He said the small team of “dissatisfied individuals” never stood a real chance against the might of Turkey’s combined military.
In the CNN interview Monday, he said refused to rule out the death penalty for the thousands arrested despite warnings from the European Union that reintroducing capital punishment would dash Turkey’s chances of joining the the EU.
Coup plotters also failed to secure most airports and other transportation hubs, didn’t occupy or attack Erdogan’s $600 million presidential palace, and failed to intercept his plane before, during or after he flew from one of the country’s busiest and most accessible airports back to Istanbul.
Yildirim said Turkey would respect the rule of law and not be driven by revenge in prosecuting suspected coup plotters.
Speaking alongside the leader of the main secularist opposition Republican People’s Party, the prime minister said the country must avoid the risk that some people might try to exploit the current situation.
“The sheer number of arrests and suspensions since Friday is alarming and we are monitoring the situation very closely”, Amnesty International said in a statement.
Authorities have since suspended or detained close to 20,000 soldiers, police, judges and civil servants. An additional 8,000 police officers have been fired from Ankara and Istanbul, on suspicion of links to the coup. About 3,000 judges have also been suspended.
An Ankara court on Monday, July 18, remanded in custody 26 former generals over the putsch, including former air force chief General Akin Ozturk, who has been painted by some Turkish media as the mastermind but has denied the claims.
In a bid to calm markets roiled by the coup attempt, Turkey’s central bank cut a key interest rate Tuesday to shore up liquidity in the economy.
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The coup crumbled after Erdogan, on holiday with his family at the coastal resort of Marmaris, phoned in to a television news programme and called for his followers to take to the streets.
