He will chair meetings in his palace on Wednesday of the cabinet and the National Security Council, after which a series of emergency measures are expected to be announced.
Advertisement
Gulen has denied the claims that he was involved in the coup, implying instead that Erdogan staged it as part of a power grab.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Twitter that the state of emergency was not aimed at “daily lives” but at “rapid functioning” of state mechanisms.
Dion also said Canada is equally troubled by reports of the firings and detentions of tens of thousands of people, including members of the judiciary, public servants, teachers, academics, members of civil society and the media. “The state of emergency would protect those values from attacks against them”, he said, in a speech following a cabinet meeting in Ankara, while he praised those who were killed fighting against the coup as “martyrs”.
Turkey in 2002 lifted its last state of emergency, which had been imposed in provinces in the southeast for the fight against Kurdish militants in 1987.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the measure was being taken to counter threats to Turkish democracy and wasn’t meant to curb basic freedoms.
Erdogan’s government said it has fired almost 22,000 education ministry workers, mostly teachers, taken steps to revoke the licenses of 21,000 other teachers at private schools and sacked or detained half a dozen university presidents in a campaign to root out alleged supporters of a USA -based Muslim cleric blamed for the botched insurrection on Friday. The Turkish government has blamed the attempted overthrow on Fethullah Gulen, a cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania who has links to education networks in Turkey and the United States, framing the widespread sackings as an effort to cleanse state institutions of his followers. The two North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies cooperate in the USA -led war against the Islamic State group, with American military planes flying missions from Turkey’s Incirlik air base into neighboring Iraq and Syria.
Wednesday’s strikes come as Turkey’s military is reeling from a failed coup by a faction within the armed forces and appear to be an attempt to show that the forces are on top of security matters. “They might have different plans for the next period”, the president said.
Despite living in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, Gulen has maintained a level of influence in Turkey second only to that of Erdogan. It also raises questions about the effectiveness of the military, courts and other institutions that are now being purged.
“For 53 years, we have been knocking at the door and they have kept us waiting, while others have joined”, he said.
“About the Gulen movement … we have received requests before the coup and after from the government of Turkey about the movement that is existing in Canada, and we have asked for evidence because otherwise the Canadian justice system can not address an issue on the basis of allegations”, Dion explained. Government officials have publicly said that capital punishment might be reintroduced for coup plotters.
Authorities have rounded up close to 9,000 people – including 115 generals, 350 officers and some 4,800 other military personnel – for alleged involvement in the coup attempt.
On Russia, Erdogan suggested that the two pilots who shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian-Turkish border in November may have been under orders from the coup plotters.
Advertisement
In order to change the constitution without a referendum, Erdogan’s party will need support from 367 members in Turkey’s 550-seat parliament, Cavusoglu said. Erdogan insisted the downgrade “does not reflect the realities of the Turkish economy”.
