Turkey yesterday vowed to root out allies of the US-based cleric it blames for a failed coup attempt last week, after a purge of the army, police and judiciary, and said it had sent Washington evidence of his wrongdoing.
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F-16 jets pounded targets belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in Iraq’s Hakurk region, Anadolu Agency reported. Raids were also launched to capture or kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as kidnap the chief of the armed forces. More than 50 thousand state employees have been rounded up, sacked or suspended in the days since the coup attempt. But the sheer scale of the purge in the days since the thwarted coup has alarmed Turkey’s allies in the West, and raised fears that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member is on a slide toward authoritarian rule.
During a live speech delivered from Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan said the state of emergency was required “to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organization involved in the coup attempt”.
“There is a clear crime of treason”, Erdogan, speaking through a translator, told CNN when asked about calls for the alleged plotters to face capital punishment. Erdogan also says the main target will be what he calls the “cancerous” opposition of the US -based cleric Fetullah Gulen, accused of being behind the coup attempt.
“While there has been global and unanimous support for the democratically elected government of Turkey in reaction to the military coup, the measures introduced today go in the wrong direction”.
He told United States broadcaster CNN that he narrowly escaped death after coup plotters stormed the resort town of Marmaris where he was on holiday. A government official told Reuters that the ban was a temporary measure implemented to stop alleged coup plotters in universities from fleeing overseas.
The president and other officials have strongly suggested the government is considering reinstating the death penalty, a practice abolished in 2004 as part of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said that a decision on whether or not to extradite Gulen would be made under a treaty between the two countries.
Turkey’s academics found themselves in the government’s crossfire once again on Wednesday amid a continued crackdown following a failed military coup last week.
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Seventy-five-year-old Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, has condemned the attempted coup and denied any role in it.
