Turkey has stepped up its purge following Friday’s coup attempt, now targeting universities and schools.
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“The institution of the death penalty can only mean that such a country could not be a member”, Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin.
The news came on top of the arrests of more than 6,000 military personal and the sackings of almost 9,000 police officers.
A Turkish official said the education ministry had been a particular target for purges because of suspicions that Mr. Gulen’s supporters were gaining power there.
Turkey’s courts have also ordered that 85 generals and admirals be jailed pending trial over their roles in Friday’s coup attempt.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister said dossiers containing details of Gulen’s activities have been sent to the U.S.
The Turkish government sent the US dossiers containing information about Gulen’s activities in their bid to get him shipped back to Turkey.
Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, told reporters Monday that the paperwork for an extradition request was being prepared.
Mr Gulen, a 75-year-old former ally of Mr Erdogan, has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s.
Seeking to quash any suggestion of lingering instability, the army said it had resumed full control.
Any revisions will probably change that, the Turkish government official said, bringing the chief of staff under the minister of defense and enacting changes that will give parliament more oversight over the military’s budget and its ranks.
Ozturk, who has denied involvement and insisted he had tried to suppress the rebellion, appeared in video from Turkish TV looking bruised with a bandage over his ear.
Some Western leaders expressed concern that Mr Erdogan, who said he was nearly killed or captured by the mutineers, was using the opportunity to consolidate power and further a process of stifling dissent. Gulen denies any involvement.
The European Union has also warned that Turkey’s accession to the European Union would halted if the death penalty is reinstated.
Mr Erdogan has also been told that reinstating the death penalty could threaten Turkey’s membership with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
In a bid to calm markets roiled by the coup attempt and the instability it revealed, Turkey’s central bank cut a key interest rate to shore up liquidity in the economy.
“July 15 has shown the power of tanks were defeated by the power of people”.
“We need unity. and brotherhood now”, he said.
Speaking to parliament, the chairman of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, said his party would back legislation to reintroduce the death penalty if it was put forward by the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.
More than 6,000 soldiers and around 1,500 others have been detained since the abortive coup.
1,500 finance ministry officials and 3,000 judges and prosecutors are under suspension.
Anadolu Agency said Tuesday that those formally arrested include former air force commander Gen. It says it has come under a sustained cyber attack after announcing on social media its plan to leak hundreds of thousands of documents on “Turkish power” on Tuesday.
The Turkish military has served as a somewhat independent entity within the government, viewing itself as a defender of the Turkish constitution in the event that any one leader or party threatened the values set forth by the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The coup crumbled after Erdogan, on holiday with his family at the coastal resort of Marmaris, phoned in to a television news program and called for his followers to take to the streets.
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He said he made his getaway to a plane bound for Istanbul only minutes before the rebels entered the hotel.
