Erdogan had also announced he was withdrawing thousands of lawsuits against individuals accused of insulting him.
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Military schools will be closed down in Turkey, the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan told А Haber TV channel July 30.
On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country.
Turkish authorities blame the coup on US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen and are now seeking to eradicate his influence from all aspects of Turkish life, especially the military.
Seventeen journalists remanded in custody by an Istanbul court over links to Gulen woke up in jails across the city on Saturday as global concern grows over the targeting of reporters in the wake of the putsch. Twenty-one detained suspects on Friday appeared in front of a judge in Istanbul to decide whether to remand them in custody.
The president has faced criticism over the scale of the crackdown in the aftermath of the coup, which has seen the arrest, removal and suspension of more than 70,000 people, according to the latest figures cited by the state-run Anadolu news agency, affecting workers in the judiciary, the education system, media, health care and other sectors.
Those held include veteran journalist Nazli Ilicak, as well as Ms Hanim Busra Erdal, the former correspondent for the pro-Gulen Zaman daily. It was a madness. “It was madness. It’s not right to arrest journalists – this country should not make the same mistakes again”, he said, quoted by the Dogan news agency.
It was not immediately clear whether Erdogan would also drop his legal action against German comedian Jan Boehmermann, who earlier this year recited a poem on television suggesting Erdogan engaged in bestiality and watched child pornography, prompting the president to file a complaint with German prosecutors that he had been insulted. And if there is even the slightest doubt that the (treatment) is improper, then the consequences will be inevitable.
The rapid pace of arrests since the failed coup has anxious many of Turkey’s allies, with some saying they see the country, which is now under a state of emergency, going down an increasingly authoritarian road.
“Some people give us advice”. They say they are anxious.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday told the European Union and United States to “mind your own business” after the West expressed alarm over the growing crackdown against suspected coup plotters, as a court placed 17 journalists under arrest. “Look at your own deeds”, Erdogan said at the presidential palace, complaining no senior Western official had visited Turkey in the wake of the coup.
“Those countries or leaders who are not anxious about Turkey’s democracy, the lives of our people, its future – while being so anxious about the fate of the putschists – can not be our friends”.
Erdogan has complained loudly about the lack of Western solidarity for Turkey but on Saturday met with Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, one of Ankara’s closest allies.
Nearly 9,000 military were detained after the attempted coup, according to country’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
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Currently, four military schools operate in Turkey.
