Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the state of emergency will be used to act swiftly against the perpetrators of the coup.
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President Erdogan is an Islamic conservative – who long before this failed coup was criticized for stripping away people’s democratic freedoms – locking up journalists, his rivals, and even those who dared to speak out against him on social media.
Governments can impose curfews and declare certain public and private areas off limits, and it can ban or restrict meetings, gatherings and rallies.
The pro-government death toll in the botched coup now stands at 246.
Government-backed security forces in a state of emergency do not need the usual authorization from a judge to search people.
The education ministry said the schools were under investigation for “crimes against the constitutional order and the running of that order”, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The convention safeguards everything from the right to life, freedom from torture, the right to a fair trial and freedom of expression.
He has called for Gulen to be extradited to Turkey, but US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that Turkey must provide hard evidence the cleric was behind the coup attempt for any extradition to take place.
Although the special measure vastly increases state security powers, Erdogan vowed there would be “no compromise on democracy”.
Erdogan’s comments to Reuters in an interview – his first since announcing a state of emergency late on Wednesday – came as Turkey sought to assure its citizens and the outside world that the government was not turning its back on democracy and returning to the harsh repression of past regimes.
The eight deny involvement and have applied for asylum, saying they fear for their safety amid widespread purges in Turkey in the aftermath of the attempted overthrow of the government.
“If conditions return to normal, we think it will take a one or one-and-a-half month period at the maximum”. More than 50 thousand state employees have been rounded up, sacked or suspended in the days since the coup attempt.
He made the announcement in a live television broadcast in front of government ministers after a meeting of the National Security Council that lasted almost five hours on Wednesday.
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“As the commander in chief, I will also attend to it so that all the viruses within the armed forces will be cleansed”.
