Turkey’s soccer federation says all members of its committees have resigned to help the investigation into the movement of a U.S.-based cleric who the country’s government says was behind the failed July 15 coup that left more than 200 people dead.
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The Turkish government has dismissed almost 1400 military personnel for suspected links to a cleric it blames for an attempted coup, state media said on Sunday, hours after President Tayyip Erdogan announced sweeping changes to the armed forces.
This is the latest crackdown on individuals suspected of having ties to alleged coup plotters including Gulen, whom Erdogan has repeated cited as the mastermind behind the coup attempt on July 15.
As Sunday’s rally got under way, organisers played the Turkish and German national anthems and held a minute of silence for people killed in the attempted coup.
Erdogan also said a three-month state of emergency declared in the wake of the coup could be extended, as the French authorities did after a string of jihadist attacks in the country.
Turkish media said the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, was to visit Turkey on Sunday night and was likely to visit Incirlik air base in the country’s south.
Erdogan on Saturday signalled plans to tighten his grip through constitutional changes which would bring the Turkish spy agency and the military chief of staff directly under his control.
Turkey’s military, the second-largest in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, has been hard hit by the coup and the ensuing purges, with about 40 percent of all generals and admirals having been dismissed.
“We are here because our compatriots in Germany are standing up for democracy and against the attempted military coup in Turkey”, said Turkey’s sports minister Akif Cagatay Kilic at the rally, Tagesspiegel daily reported.
More than 50,000 people have lost their jobs nationwide and more than 18,000 have been detained since the coup, in which rebel soldiers came up against loyal supporters of the president.
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.
Meanwhile, the decree assigns Ankara’s Gulhane Military Medical Academy and military hospitals across Turkey under the Health Ministry.
Amid fears that the crowd could be further riled by live screenings of speeches made from Turkey by politicians including Erdogan, Germany’s constitutional court banned an application for such broadcasts.
About 2,300 officers were deployed at the rally, which was organized by the Union of European-Turkish Democrats.
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“We will establish a national defence university”, he said.
