Prime Minister Binali Yildirim pledged to supply USA authorities with evidence linking the coup attempt to Gulen, who has been exiled in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s.
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Lt Col Levent Turkkan confessed to links with Gulen’s movement. He didn’t specify exactly what the state of emergency would entail. “We will, one by one, cleanse the state of (Gulen’s followers) and eliminate those who are trying to harm the country”.
Earlier Wednesday, the president said 9,004 people had been arrested so far, and that efforts would continue to uproot coup plotters in the military, judicial system and civil service.
Most importantly, more than 17,000 teachers, administrators, social workers and university deans were suspended over claims they support Fethullah Gulen, Anadolu reports, with the crackdown expanding to the laying off of hundreds of people working in government positions and with the religious affairs office. On Wednesday, academics were barred from traveling overseas for work in an effort to prevent scholars and university teachers accused of participation in the coup plot from fleeing the country, Turkish officials said…
“It isn’t martial law of [the] 1990s”, said Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek in a series of tweets. He said it would be used to go after “rogue” elements within the state and that there would have been “carnage in the streets” had the military coup succeeded.
“Fetullah terrorist organisation had a parallel organisation within the state and every step they have taken in making the attempt and failed coup, I don’t think we have come to the end of it yet”. This practice is absolutely not against democracy, the rule of law, and freedoms.
“No one said “Human rights are being lost in France or markets are collapsing”.
“There will be no curfews”.
Unluhisarcikli said the scale of the crackdown raised concerns that some innocent people would also be punished for the actions of others.
Announcing the state of emergency late on Wednesday, Erdogan said it would last at least three months and allow his government to take swift measures against supporters of the coup that attempted to topple him over the weekend. The cost of insuring Turkish debt against default rose to its highest in almost a month, according to data from Markit.
Turkey had in 2002 lifted its last state of emergency, which had been imposed in provinces in the southeast for the fight against Kurdish armed groups in 1987.
In a sign of how shaken Turkey’s leadership has been by the coup attempt, with dozens of generals arrested as well as Erdogan’s aide de camp, government ministers and top officials have not been briefed in advance of the meetings. The lieutenant was one of about 30 soldiers said to be involved in the hotel attack in the resort of Marmais.
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Gulen has denied any role in the coup attempt, warning the Turks instead that the move could have been orchestrated by the government to purge its opponents. “I can say that in Turkey, the anti-coup attitude is the common denominator”.
