It can also restrict or ban any kind of audio-visual broadcast, whether it be television or radio news, or TV shows or movies.
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The targeting of education ties in with Erdogan’s belief that the U.S.-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whose followers run a worldwide network of schools, seeks to infiltrate the Turkish education system and other institutions in order to bend the country to his will. The cleric’s movement, which espouses moderation and multi-faith harmony, says it is a scapegoat for what it describes as the president’s increasingly autocratic conduct.
A Greek court has sentenced eight Turkish military personnel who fled to Greece aboard a helicopter during an attempted coup in their country to two months in prison on charges of illegal entry into Greece.
The state of emergency puts the military firmly under government control, and allows for new laws that critics say could suspend civil rights.
“Erdogan says its necessary to protect the rule of law and democracy, but he also made clear these would be used extensively against the Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally now accused of fomenting this failed coup”, Peter says.
“It is still in civilian hands”, he said.
He was previously detained and tried under the sweeping Ergenekon trials a few years ago that targeted secularists suspected of devising anti-government plots.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the emergency measures Wednesday night, promising to “cleanse” both the military and the government. “It is like a metastasis that is going on in the body that is Turkey”.
Kurtulmus said the measures were in place “to fight against the parallel structure”, according to Anadolu. He regularly refers to Gulen and his supporters in Turkey and overseas as a “terrorist organisation”.
The Turkish Parliament on Thursday approved the state of emergency declaration by a 346 to 115 vote. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party account for 317 members in the chamber.
Turkey’s National Security Council is holding an emergency meeting following a coup attempt last week that was derailed by security forces and protesters loyal to the government.
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 U.S.-based Muslim cleric blamed for the botched insurrection on Friday.
“The world is not only with the European Union, and countries like the US, Russia and China all have death penalty…”
“Erdogan has always envisioned remaking Turkish society and undoing what he sees as the excesses of Kemalism”, the secular ideology of Turkish national founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, wrote Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
It explained that even if the European Convention on Human Rights were suspended, the country still had commitments under global law.
The Board of Higher Education issued the directive on Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday US Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by allied foreign ministers, said that while “we condemn this coup”, it was important that the response to it “fully respects that democracy that we are supporting”.
Amnesty International said it recognized that the government had to take measures to prevent another coup attempt, but warned that under the state of emergency, dismissed civil servants would not be able to challenge the decrees in administrative courts and detention periods would be extended. “I urge the USA government to reject any effort to abuse the extradition process to carry out political vendettas”, he said in a statement issued by an affiliated group, the Alliance for Shared Values. The officials said earlier this week that at least four remained on the run.
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White House spokesman Josh Earnest says Turkey had submitted materials related to Gulen and the administration was reviewing whether they amounted to a formal extradition request.
