Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Thursday to restructure the military and give it “fresh blood” as emergency rule took hold across the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member country after last week’s attempted coup.
Advertisement
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was accused of autocratic conduct before the insurrection, said the measure would counter threats to Turkish democracy.
“This measure is in no way against democracy, the law and freedoms”, Erdogan added.
Erdogan said the government’s Supreme Military Council, which is chaired by the prime minister, and includes the defence minister and the chief of staff, would oversee the restructuring of the armed forces. The emergency rule was gradually lifted by 2002.
A total of 246 people, including members of the security forces and civilians, were martyred during the failed putsch.
The emergency state was implemented following a failed coup last weekend during which over 250 were killed.
He was previously detained and tried under the sweeping Ergenekon trials a few years ago that targeted secularists suspected of devising anti-government plots.
The government claims a USA -based Muslim cleric is behind the coup attempt and has embarked on a massive crackdown on the movement’s followers.
“We’ve sent all the necessary documents to the United States, we’ve begun the extradition process, and we will wait for the decision”, Erdogan said in an interview with Al Jazeera broadcaster.
Mr Gulen’s followers run a worldwide network of schools and Mr Erdogan believes the cleric is seeking to infiltrate the Turkish education system and other institutions.
The president also criticised Standard & Poor’s decision to cut Turkey’s foreign currency credit rating after the coup attempt, saying it was a political move, and showed the ratings agency had “sided with the coup, not with democracy”.
Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek has said there will be no interference with market freedoms. “How they will fill the vacancies, I don’t know”.
So far, almost 10,000 people have been arrested while hundreds of schools have been closed.
“I would like to underline that the declaration of the state of emergency has the sole objective of taking the necessary measures, in the face of the terrorist threat that our country is facing”, he said in a televised address, vowing that the “virus in the military will be cleansed”.
Regarding claims of a lack of freedom of the press in Turkey, Erdogan said he has never been anti-media but freedom of expression should never be a weapon.
In July 2015, Turkey agreed to open up Incirlik to USA manned and unmanned aircraft to conduct anti-terror operations in Syria against Daesh positions.
Turkey’s domestic situation is increasingly a concern as the government seeks to rid broad sectors of society of alleged antagonists.
The lieutenant was one of about 30 soldiers who government officials have said were involved in the attack on the hotel in the resort town of Marmais. “No one should turn this into an opportunity because we will resist him the same way we fought the coup plotters”. So they’ve fired more than 15,000 school teachers, demanded resignations from over 1,500 university deans, and suspended around 8,000 police officers – along with almost 3,000 judges and prosecutors. It said 58,881 civil service workers were dismissed, forced to resign or had their licenses taken away.
Mr Gulen, a reclusive 75-year-old Islamic preacher, has been in exile in the United States since 1999, but wields enormous influence in Turkish society, with supporters in the media, police and judiciary.
He said the Turkish government cut electricity at all air bases in response to the coup attempt.
It also portends a crisis for the country’s security forces.
Advertisement
The coup has led to public anger and calls for the government to reinstate the death penalty, a demand that Erdogan has said he will consider. “If I stayed (in Marmaris) 10, 15 minutes more, I would either have been killed or kidnapped and taken away by them”, he said. Erdogan insisted the downgrade “does not reflect the realities of the Turkish economy”. The Turkish currency dropped 1.8% against the USA dollar Wednesday, trading at a low for the year of just over 3 lira to the dollar.
