Turkey pushed on Saturday with a sweeping crackdown against suspected plotters of its failed coup, defiantly telling European Union critics it had no choice but to root out hidden enemies.
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Erdogan says he can not understand why Turkey’s “Western friends fail to see it that way”. Turkish leaders allege that supporters of a US -based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, infiltrated state agencies and groomed loyalists in a vast network of private schools as part of an elaborate, long-term plan to take over the country.
Turkish authorities have already launched a series of mass purges of the armed forces, police, judiciary and education system, targeting followers of a US-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan has accused of masterminding the failed coup. “And it would be processed the way it is always processed, and that we would certainly take any allegations like this seriously”, said the US President.
Members of Turkey’s ruling and main opposition parties are rallying together in support of democracy and to condemn the bloody coup attempt July 15.
Turkish ministers have taken to media, Twitter and conference calls to insist the state of emergency is aimed exclusively at those associated with the coup, that life for ordinary people won’t be affected and that economic reforms will continue.
The number of people detained has reached more than 9,000, including 6,000 military, who are being held in what Erdogan describes as “pre-trial detention”.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says 15 universities, 934 other schools and 109 student dormitories with alleged links to Gulen have been closed.
“I advised my colleagues not to go to the office for their own safety”, he said.
Those institutions “belong to, have ties with or are in communication with” the Gulen movement, according to a decree published Saturday in Turkey’s official gazette.
Aside from the detentions, more than 50,000 other civil servants, down to the family and sports ministries, have been sacked or suspended – in a purge whose speed and scale suggested to many observers that their names were on pre-existing lists. U.S. President Barack Obama has said there is a legal process for extradition and has encouraged Turkey to present evidence. Those dismissed can not work in the public sector and can not work for private security firms.
However, the coup quickly failed, and soldiers were quickly rounded up.
Some of the soldiers who seized state broadcaster TRT during the attempted coup came from the presidential guard unit, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told Anadolu state news agency.
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Those released were privates, Ankara’s chief prosecutor Harun Kodalak was quoted as saying by Turkish media, adding that the authorities were seeking to swiftly sort out those who had fired on people from those who had not.
