Erdogan also said the coup “was not yet over, as there might be other plans linked to it”, without offering additional details.
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Mr Erdogan made his announcement in a live television broadcast in front of government ministers after a meeting of the National Security Council that lasted almost five hours.
Women at a demonstration in support of Turkey’s President Erdogan in Istanbul.
The state of emergency was needed “in order to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organization involved in the coup attempt”, Turkey’s president said in a television broadcast after National Security Council and cabinet meetings in Ankara on Wednesday.
Now he is making a similar claim, accusing US -based Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen of responsibility for mounting the failed coup and demanding that Gulen be extradited.
“Nearly 60,000 soldiers, police officers, judges and civil servants have been suspended and detained across the country since last weekend, and about 1,000 members of the military have been accused of connections to the attempted coup”, the New York Times reports.
Following the attempt, President Erdogan has ordered the arrests of thousands of people as he tries to regain control over the country.
The purges of Turkish institutions included the country’s Education Ministry on Tuesday, when more than 15,000 of its employees were suspended. A White House spokesman did not give details about the US position on Gulen’s possible extradition, except to say the decision will be made according to a longstanding treaty between Ankara and Washington.
Ninety-nine of Turkey’s roughly 360 military generals have been charged over their alleged roles in last Friday’s attempt to overthrow the government.
Erdogan’s post-coup purge of state institutions has since been extended to the education sector.
On Wednesday night, Turkey imposed a three-month-long state of emergency.
Further details were not provided-but as Bloomberg notes, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a rocky relationship with academics all year, putting many on trial for criticizing the government’s handling of tension with Turkish Kurds in the southeast. But he also suggested that the USA government shouldn’t require the facts before extraditing him.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the measure is being taken to counter threats to Turkish democracy and insisted it wasn’t meant to curb basic freedoms.
