Turkey has arrested the nephew of Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric who lives in the United States and is lately being accused by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to have masterminded the failed coup attempt of last week.
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The government believes Fethullah Gulen was its mastermind, a Muslim cleric living in the USA and because of this, Ankara also felt Washington had prior knowledge of what was about to unfold.
According to the Turkish presidency, the decree published Saturday will close 1,043 schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 unions, 15 universities and 35 medical institutions.
The state of emergency decree may suspend freedoms and rights of the Turkish population in an attempt to reduce and control any subversive movement or critics against the Erdogan’s government which maintains restrictive – and undemocratic, as some deem- policies that have generated social discontent.
“From the very beginning, I wanted to say that despite what has happened a week ago in Turkey, that we will continue to strongly adhere to democratic principles and apply rule of law and not much really has changed”.
“The decision to extend the detention period to 30 days is disproportionate”, Amnesty International Turkey Researcher Andrew Gardner said.
Erdogan has said Ankara will soon dispatch its justice and interior ministers to Washington, where President Barack Obama has said that any solid “evidence” would be looked at seriously under United States law.
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.
It is the first measure implemented under new powers granted to the president by a three-month state of emergency declaration issued Thursday.
The meeting, which normally takes place every August at the headquarters of the military’s General Staff, will this time be held in the presidential palace.
The gazette statement also announced that 1,043 private schools and 1,229 associations and foundations will be shut down under the state of emergency.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, more than a thousand army soldiers detained in the wake of the July 15 coup were released.
President Tayyip Erdogan accuses Gulen of building a “state within a state” and of plotting to overthrow Turkey’s government, charges the 75-year-old cleric has denied.
The ruling AK Party that Erdogan co-founded holds 316 votes in the 550-seat legislature.
Erdogan has declared July 15 a national holiday to commemorate the people killed by the forces that staged the coup attempt.
Erdoğan said more than 13,000 people with suspected links to the coup attempt have been taken into custody, including 1,485 police officers, more than 8,000 soldiers, 2,101 members of the judiciary, 52 district governors and 689 civilians. And in the past there had been some support for the coups that took place in the country, even though these always came at a very high price.
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After the coup, Western countries pledged support for democracy in Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally and an important partner in the fight against Islamic State, but have also expressed concern over the scale of subsequent purges of state institutions.
