The crackdown is targeting alleged followers of Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based cleric Erdogan blames for the uprising.
Advertisement
The purges have also hit government ministries, schools and universities, the police, civil service, media and business.
“This [failed coup] attempt aimed to weaken the state with all its institutions by getting rid of the government completely”.
However, the outlet speculated that locals may have committed the literary arson out of fear of being swept up in the “witch hunt” for coup plotters.
On Thursday, 99 colonels were promoted to the rank of general or admiral, following the dishonourable discharge of almost 1,700 military personnel over their alleged roles in the coup.
Speaking later in the evening at an event in Ankara to commemorate the dead and wounded, Erdogan said nobody from the European Union or the Council of Europe had visited Turkey to express their condolences for those killed in the coup.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds court with military chiefs during a meeting in Ankara on Friday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday described as “unfortunate” comments by US officials suggesting that purges in the Turkish military after a failed coup were damaging cooperation in the fight against Islamic State (IS).
Referring to Votel, Erdogan said, “It’s not up to you to make that decision”.
Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture and possible death on the night of the coup, told Reuters in an interview last week that the military, Nato’s second biggest, needed “fresh blood”. Erdogan says the US was taking sides with coup plotters.
‘Turkey has been an extraordinary and vital partner in the region for many years.
“We work together on a number of the president’s worldwide priorities” including the fight against the Islamic State, he added.
But he also said he was dropping hundreds of lawsuits against individuals accused of insulting him in what he said was a gesture of goodwill.
On July 19, United States ambassador John Bass even went on CNN Turk to dismiss the accusations against the US.
Elsewhere, thousands of Turkish citizens protested outside the gates of the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey on Thursday, which is a major hub for USA and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation aircraft bombing ISIS in nearby Syria. The protesters burned American flags and demanded that the government close the base.
The rapid pace of arrests since the failed coup has anxious many of Turkey’s allies, with some saying they see the country, which is now under a state of emergency, going down an increasingly authoritarian road. According to recent figures from the interior ministry, more than 18,000 people have been detained since the coup attempt as part of the investigation into it. Of those, more than 3,500 have been released, a senior government official said.
Advertisement
The increasingly authoritarian regime has purged the media, universities, schools, the police, judiciary and military of potential opponents.
