Erdogan told the broadcaster more than 9,000 people have been detained, almost 20,000 charged by a court and some 60,000 purged from state institutions, according to Peter and Al-Jazeera. Erdogan was heading the meeting Wednesday of the council, which is the highest advisory body on security issues.
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Dutch and Canadian foreign ministers also expressed concern about the scale of the crackdown by Turkish authorities in the aftermath of the country’s failed coup.
“No democracy shall allow for soldiers, prosecutors, police, judges, and bureaucrats to take orders from an outside organization instead of the institutional bureaucracy”, said Erdogan.
The president, who has said he narrowly escaped being killed or captured by renegade military units, suggested that purges would continue within military ranks. He described the armed forces as the “final stronghold” of Gulen’s network. The emergency rule was gradually lifted by 2002.
Turkish special forces policemen carry the coffin an officer who was killed last Friday during the failed military coup, during his funeral procession in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, July 20, 2016.
Fethullah Gulen is accused by the Turkish government of orchestrating Friday’s failed military coup from his home in the mountains of Pennsylvania. “We will never step away from it”, he said.
The targeting of education ties in with Erdogan’s belief that the USA -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. “There will be no restriction of movement other than for the suspects”, Simsek said.
In the coming months Mr Erdogan is likely to consolidate power by calling for a referendum on a new presidential system that will further consolidate his position as leader. Dozens of others are still being questioned. “Who planned it and directed it I do not know”.
Turkey’s state-run news agency says courts have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial over their roles in a botched coup attempt.
Gulen, who has many supporters in Turkey’s civil service, judiciary and police, has strongly denied the accusation.
Under the U.S. -Turkey extradition agreement, Washington can only extradite a person if he or she has committed an “extraditable act”.
Turkey said Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim cleric, was behind the coup and has demanded his extradition.
Meanwhile, Erdogan’s military aide, Lt. Col. Erkan Kivrak, has been taken into custody in southern Turkey for alleged ties to the plotters, according to Anadolu. State TRT television said 95 academics had been removed from their posts at Istanbul University alone.
“This is a state of emergency imposed not on the people, but on (the state) itself”, declared Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
Calls to reinstate the death penalty for plotters and the broad crackdown have drawn appeals from Western allies for Ankara to uphold the rule of law in the country.
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Greek Cypriot officials say Turkey holds the key to deal because it bankrolls the Turkish Cypriot economy and maintains more than 40,000 troops in the breakaway north. The news caused the Turkish lira to weaken beyond 3 to the U.S. dollar.
