The president and other officials have strongly suggested the government is considering reinstating the death penalty, a practice abolished in 2004 as part of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.
Advertisement
But in a shocking twist, his govenerment have suspended the European Human Rights Convention as the state of emergency continues.
Also Tuesday, Anadolu reported that Turkey’s media regulatory agency canceled all broadcast rights and licenses for any media outlets linked to or supporting the group behind the failed coup. A total of 50,000 civil service employees have been fired in the purges, which have reached Turkey’s national intelligence service and the prime minister’s office.
Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has long accused Gulen of plotting to overthrow the officially secular government from a gated 26-acre compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency says courts have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial. The government maintains that Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim cleric, was behind the coup, and has vociferously demanded his extradition.
“Life of ordinary people and businesses will go un-impacted, uninterrupted, business will be as usual”.
It is still unclear who or what exactly is responsible for the attempt. “And there is very strong suspicion for his involvement, for Gulen’s involvement, in this coup attempt”.
It’s the latest in a string of crackdowns on workers allegedly tied to the exiled cleric blamed for last week’s coup attempt.
Among those arrested include former air force commander Gen. “I’m confident Turkey will come out of this with much stronger democracy, better functioning market economy & enhanced investment climate”.
Even so, Obama made clear the United States expects that any inquiry should be conducted “consistent with the democratic” values of the Turkish constitution, he said, while declining to answer whether the U.S.is concerned that the response won’t respect those democratic values. “If I stayed (in Marmaris) 10, 15 minutes more, I would either have been killed or kidnapped and taken away by them”.
Advertisement
A total of 208 people were killed, including 145 civilians, 60 police and three soldiers, along with 104 coup plotters, the government and army says. In May, a complaint filed with Texas education officials accused a network of charter schools associated with the Gulen movement of abusing a visa program to import large numbers of Turkish teachers and violating state and federal laws by paying them more than American teachers. For some Turks, the move raised fears of a return to the days of martial law after a 1980 military coup, or the height of a Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s when much of the largely Kurdish southeast was under a state of emergency declared by the previous government.
