Excluded are those convicted of terrorism, murder, sexual assault and other violent crimes, officials said.
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Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in a series of messages on Twitter that the release was “not an amnesty” and the convicts were not being pardoned but released on parole. But the move to free 38,000 prisoners marks only “the first stage” of the new measure, Bozdag said.
According to Bozdag, the decree is only applicable to people whose crimes were committed before July 1, two weeks before the coup attempt that produced over 300 deaths. Convicts who have already served more than half of their sentence will also be eligible for parole. “I thank President Recep Tayyip Erdogan”.
The decree was published on Wednesday morning in Turkey’s Official Gazette, but the government did not disclose reasons for the move.
Lawmakers had anticipated this decree “because the prisons are very full”.
Since the coup, more than 35,000 people have been detained, of whom 17,000 have been placed under formal arrest, and tens of thousands more suspended in a purge of Turkey’s military, law-and-order, education and justice systems.
The government says the attempted coup, which led to at least 270 deaths, was carried out by followers of a movement led by US -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who have infiltrated the military and other state institutions. The crackdown has reached every sector in Turkey, including the army, security branches, universities, schools, hospitals and the media.
The detentions bring the number of imprisoned Turkish media workers to 99, based on figures from the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) media watchdog, making Turkey the world’s biggest jailer of journalists.
Prior to the coup, Turkey’s prisons were already straining at capacity. In 2000, prisoners in Turkish jails numbered fewer than 50,000, according to ICPR.
– President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had suggested Turkey could bring back capital punishment – abolished in 2004 as part of the country’s reforms to join the European Union – in the wake of the July 15 failed coup. Erdogan says Gulen was behind the attempt by rogue troops using tanks and jets to overthrow the government.
At least 24 people were detained, Ozgur Gundem said according to its website, a lot of them on Tuesday in the raid on the paper’s Istanbul office.
“If the United States does not send him (Gulen) to Turkey, relations will not be the same as they were before July 15”, Bozdag said, warning Washington not to “lose” the Turkish people.
Police in Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, “are holding detainees in stress positions for up to 48 hours, denying them food, water and medical treatment”, Amnesty’s report said.
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“It is absolutely imperative that the Turkish authorities halt these abhorrent practices and allow worldwide monitors to visit all these detainees in the places they are being held”, stated Amnesty’s director in Europe John Dalhuisen.
