Thousands of officials suspected of links to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen – who the government blames for the coup – have also been purged from the judiciary and Interior Ministry.
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During a live speech delivered from Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan said the state of emergency was required “to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organization involved in the coup attempt”.
Erdogan made his announcement in a live television broadcast late on Wednesday evening in front of assembled government ministers after a meeting of the National Security Council that lasted almost five hours.
Erdogan’s government said it has fired almost 22,000 education ministry workers, mostly teachers, taken steps to revoke the licenses of 21,000 other teachers at private schools and sacked or detained half a dozen university presidents in a campaign to root out alleged supporters of a US-based Muslim cleric blamed for the botched insurrection on Friday.
The deadly coup attempt began late on Friday when rogue elements of the Turkish military tried to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government.
Almost 20,000 members of the police, civil service, judiciary and army have already been detained or suspended since Friday night’s coup. Erdogan said he believed the US-based cleric was behind last week’s attempted military coup. Turkey’s military is reported to be 640,000 personnel strong.
Mr Erdogan also expressed his “deepest gratitude” to citizens who took to the streets during the unrest and stayed there to show their support for his administration.
Academics were banned from traveling overseas on Wednesday in what a Turkish official said was a temporary measure to prevent the risk of alleged coup plotters in universities from fleeing.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday the state of emergency should only last as long as it’s “absolutely necessary”.
For his part, Mr Gulen says claims he was behind the coup attempt are “ridiculous”.
Turkey has launched a massive post-coup purge.
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Western leaders have pushed Turkey to follow the rule of law as the massive retaliatory purge adds to existing concerns about human rights and democracy in the strategic North Atlantic Treaty Organisation country. The country’s leadership later said that the coup was quashed.
