Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday announced a three-month state of emergency, saying this would enable the authorities to take swift and effective action against those responsible for last weekend’s failed military coup. Having served the maximum term as prime minister, he won election as president and was turning that office from a mostly ceremonial position into a much more powerful executive function.
Advertisement
He chaired a meeting of the National Security Council for almost five hours on Wednesday.
The coup attempt has led to public anger and calls for the government to bring back the death penalty, while the state-run religious affairs body has said no religious rites would be performed for the coup plotters killed in the uprising. Those suspected to be part of this terrorist organization will be duly investigated and prosecuted if necessary.
1,577 university deans have been sacked and the education ministry have moved to revoke the licences of 21,000 teachers working in private institutions.
The newest sackings and calls for resignation are the latest in a movement that Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says is aimed at removing the influence of Gulen “by its roots”.
He has previously denied accusations he engineered the coup attempt last Friday night.
“It is important for all of us that Turkey continue to be a strong North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally because Turkey is on the border of all the instability, all the violence we have seen in Iraq and Syria”, Stoltenberg said. “Everything will be done in accordance with the laws, and the criminals (coup attempters) will be convicted according to the law”. The cleric has established cram schools across Turkey to mold the country’s future elites and place them in core posts at government agencies.
Officials have blamed the unrest on the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and the “parallel structure” he has formed to topple the government, the BBC added.
And he said Canada is concerned that “the democratic institutions, Turkey’s constitution, are respected”.
Around a third of Turkey’s roughly 360 serving generals have been detained since the coup attempt, a second senior official said, with 99 charged pending trial and 14 more being held.
Advertisement
Gulen, meanwhile, said accusations linking him to the coup attempt were “ridiculous”.
