Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday a nationwide three-month state of emergency after Friday’s failed coup that martyred hundreds of people and injured over 1,500 others.
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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.
“The goal of the declaration of the state of emergency is, in fact, to be able to take the most efficient steps in order to remove this threat as soon as possible, which is a threat to democracy, to the rule of law and to the rights and freedoms of the citizens in our country”, Erdogan said, according to a government translation.
Canada has told Turkey to respect the rule of law as it moves against the plotters of its failed coup, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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.
Erdogan has accused US -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the failed coup.
The move, Bozdag said on Thursday, was made “to get rid of the Fethullah Terror organization and its tentacles”.
He said “it is out of the question” for the armed forces to seize power.
“We will remain within a democratic parliamentary system”. We’re not a member of you…
Meanwhile, video emerged of soldiers firing at crowds who rushed to defend the government during the failed coup.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama had discussed the request during a phone call with Erdogan on Tuesday.
“Every member of our nation came together as one”, he said. The president vowed that Turkey will maintain fiscal discipline.
Turkey experienced a revolution in 1923 when Ataturk, a war hero who founded the Turkish republic as colonial powers gobbled up former Ottoman territories, abolished the caliphate and its traditions of dress and language, viewed as symbols of stagnation, and turned to the West as a model. “There is no liquidity problem”, he said.
“Given this imperative, Canada is concerned by the state of emergency declared by President Erdogan today”.
Turkey in 2002 lifted its last state of emergency, which had been imposed in provinces in the southeast for the fight against Kurdish militants in 1987.
“The state of emergency law is a process of empowering governors more”. Lawmakers can sanction a state of emergency for a period of up to six months. “We are the guarantors of it”, he added.
Yildirim also reiterated his call to citizens to not leave the streets.
In other coup-related news, a soldier allegedly linked to the attack on a hotel where Erdogan had been vacationing during the foiled coup was arrested in southwestern Turkey, the state agency Anadolu reported Thursday.
Following the meeting, the Council of Ministers is expected to gather. “The steps to be taken afterward were also discussed”. That is why the government’s measures in cleansing all Gülenists from the state apparatus and providing security to the country should be proportional and should not harm our democracy.
While the purges may be created to derail any future insurrections, there are increasing concerns that Erdogan is seizing the moment to transform Turkey, steering it from its secular roots toward a more pious Muslim model and cementing personal power at the expense of democratic ideals. “No one need worry about it”, he said.
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The failed putsch and the purge that followed have unsettled the country of 80 million, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran and Western ally in the fight against Islamic State.
