Mevlut Aydin prays inside his restaurant in the conservative Fatih neighborhood of Istanbul, Thursday July 21, 2016.
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The declaration of the state of emergency raised further concerns about restrictions on freedoms and rights in Turkey, which was stunned by a failed coup attempt on Friday.
President Erdogan on Wednesday declared a three-month state of emergency following a botched coup attempt, declaring he would rid the military of the “virus” of subversion and giving the government sweeping powers to expand a crackdown that has already included mass arrests and the closure of hundreds of schools. “Whatever the law allows or admits”, he said, adding that his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had at one stage helped the Gulen movement but had been betrayed.
The measure would give Erdogan the authority to extend detention times for suspects and issue decrees that have the force of law without parliamentary approval, among other powers.
The president accuses a USA -based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, of being behind the coup and the state broadcaster described his followers as being part of the “Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization”. Citing France’s ongoing state of emergency, he said European critics could take “a lesson in democracy” from Turkey.
“This measure is in no way against democracy, the law and freedoms”, Erdogan said Wednesday after a meeting with Cabinet ministers and security advisers.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the government arrested almost 10,000 people and closed hundreds of schools. Already, almost 10,000 people have been arrested while hundreds of schools have been closed.
A state of emergency has never been nationwide though it was declared in the restive southeast of the country between 1987 and 2002.
“That is really the primary goal. that these people, who have been involved in this coup attempt, and who killed people, murdered people basically on the street, will be put on trial without any chance of coming back to the state bureaucracy again”.
Speaking in the Turkish parliament, Bozdag also said citizens would not feel any change in their lives during the state of emergency and that it would not negatively impact the economy or investments.
The state of emergency will give broad powers to security forces and the government, NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports.
“Our aim is to keep the state of emergency as short as possible”, Numan Kurtulmus told reporters in Ankara on Thursday. “These people have infiltrated the state organisation in this country and they rebelled against the state”, he said, calling the actions of Friday night “inhuman” and “immoral”.
A spokesman for the Turkish government said the United States should be able to extradite the cleric “on grounds of suspicion” rather than requiring specific facts about the case against him.
And they also warned Turkey over its decision to suspend the European Convention of Human Rights, saying it must stick to the conditions by which a suspension is permitted.
“There will be no curfews”.
Emergency rule will also permit the president and cabinet to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary.
Last month, a lawyer representing the Turkish government said he would continue exposing Gulen’s “unlawful conduct” one day after a federal judge in Scranton, Pennsylvania, dismissed his lawsuit against the cleric.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a three-month state of emergency for Turkey following a failed coup attempt over the weekend.
Article 120 of the constitution allows a state of emergency to be imposed “at a time of serious deterioration of public order because of acts of violence”.
France declared its own state of emergency following last November’s attacks by Islamist militants in Paris. “It isn’t martial law of 1990s”, he wrote on Twitter.
In other developments, a soldier allegedly linked to the attack on a hotel where Erdogan had been vacationing during the foiled coup was arrested in southwestern Turkey, the state agency Anadolu reported Thursday.
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The government said the attackers arrived minutes after he left the premises and officials said earlier this week that at least four remained on the run.
