It comes five days after a failed coup attempt and amid a major crackdown against thousands of members of the security forces, judiciary, civil service and academia.
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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.
Turkey immediately said it was partially suspending the European Convention on Human Rights, allowing it more leeway to deal with individual cases, by invoking an article most recently used by France and Ukraine.
The Turkish president made the announcement after he chaired a meeting of the National Security Council at the Presidential Palace in Ankara.
The Guardian reports the Erdogan government has now fired more than 15,000 employees at the education ministry, 257 officials at the prime minister’s office, and 492 clerics at the directorate for religious affairs, while demanding the resignation of 1,500 university deans.
More than 50,000 people have been rounded up, sacked or suspended from their jobs by Turkey’s government in the wake of last week’s failed coup.
The state of emergency was needed “in order to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organisation involved in the coup attempt”, he said at the presidential palace in Ankara.
He said that Erdogan may have staged it himself – a claim which the Turkish president has called “nonsensical”.
Domestic and global groups have condemned the crackdown against media outlets in the aftermath of the attempted coup.
He also told Al Jazeera it would be a “big mistake” if the USA failed to extradite Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and is accused of masterminding the plot.
A group of military personnel are detained in Turkey after the country’s failed coup attempt.
Pro-government crowds, which have rallied at major squares every night since Friday’s coup, have been clamouring for traitors to face capital punishment.
Erdogan raised the idea of reinstating the death penalty in Turkey for use against the coup plotters.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister said dossiers containing details of Gulen’s activities have been sent to the US. He also revealed coup participants almost snatched him up from a vacation home in the resort town of Marmaris.
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“But of course, it will take a parliamentary decision for that to take action in the form of a constitutional measure”, he said, given that Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2004 as part of its long-standing efforts to join the European Union.
