On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the country had succeeded in purging the military from all elements linked to US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the failed coup attempt.
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Four were then freed but the rest were placed under pre-trial arrest, charged with “membership of a terror group“, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Erdogan told the A-Haber television channel late Saturday that he wanted to introduce constitutional changes to bring the Turkish spy agency and military chief of staff directly under his control, which would need parliamentary approval.
The president said all of Turkey’s military training academies would be closed and replaced by a single national defense university.
On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country.
“Even during the coup attempt process, we have not made the slightest compromise with the law”.
Clashes during the short-lived coup bid killed more than 235 people and wounded almost 10 times that many, but the major impact of the attempt to remove Erdogan has been the wave of detentions, firings and suspensions.
Since the coup, Somalia has already shut two schools and a hospital believed to have links to Gulen, and other governments have received similar requests from Ankara, although not all have been willing to comply.
Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin criticized a decision by German authorities not to permit messages from politicians in Turkey to be shown on a video screen at a Sunday anti-coup rally in the German city of Cologne that was expected to draw up to 30,000 people.
Gulen has denied all charges against him, and Erdogan’s critics suggest the president is using his crusade against the elderly exile as a cover for policies aimed at quashing all dissent.
Erdogan has also strongly criticized US military officials for comments he said implied that the detention of Turkish military officers as part of the coup investigation could affect the country’s fight against the Islamic State group in neighboring Syria and Iraq.
The president said that he would be dropping several pending lawsuits against people he deemed to have insulted him, he said at a ceremony in Ankara. Correct arrest and custody procedures were being applied under a three-month state of emergency announced recently, it said.
A detained Turkish soldier who allegedly took part in a military coup arrives with his hands bound behind his back at the Istanbul Justice Palace on July 20, 2016.
“As a milestone, I hereby withdraw all the cases filed for insulting me and forgive all the offenders”, he said.
Those held include the veteran journalist Nazli Ilicak as well as the former correspondent for the pro-Gulen Zaman daily Hanim Busra Erdal.
The number of public sector workers removed from their posts since the coup attempt is now more than 66,000, including about 43,000 people in education, Anadolu reported on Friday.
The president also stressed the Turkish government’s ongoing efforts for the extradition of Fetullah Gulen from the US, where he has lived since 1999.
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Turkey has also targeted journalists accused of links to Gulen, causing further worldwide alarm.
