On July 21, the Turkish parliament voted for a state of emergency in the country for the next three months.
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Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the presidential guard regiment will be disbanded, the Anadolu news agency said on Saturday citing the Turkish NTV channel.
It is expected to be ratified by parliament, where his party holds the majority.
Turkey has shut down more than 2,000 institutions linked to the cleric Fethullah Gulen – the president’s longtime rival, who has been in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. The United States has said Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, needs to provide clear evidence of Gulen’s involvement in the coup before it can extradite him.
Erdogan declared the state of emergency late on Wednesday saying it would enable authorities to swiftly and effectively root out supporters of last weekend’s failed military coup in which at least 246 people were killed. On Saturday 1,200 were released, according to government officials.
Erdogan has also approved the extension of the period in which certain suspects can be detained to 30 days from a maximum of four days, Anadolu said.
Detained Turkish soldiers who allegedly took part in a military coup arrive in a bus at the courthouse in Istanbul.
Turkey’s secular Republican People’s Party has planned a rally for Sunday. There has been some internet speculation that Erdogan engineered the unrest in order to rally support and thereby increase his power, a conspiracy theory rejected by the government and most commentators on Turkey’s recent turbulence.
The secularists have said their denouncement of the coup does not mean carte blanche for the measures the government will try to enact in the failed coup’s wake.
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The government’s response to the rally will also widely be seen as a test of its commitment to democratic freedoms.
