Anadolu reported that Turkey’s top broadcasting authority on Tuesday revoked the licenses for 24 radio and television companies that it said are linked to Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan blames for masterminding the coup.
Advertisement
Erdogan, who had been accused of autocratic conduct even before this week’s crackdown on alleged opponents, said the state of emergency would counter threats to Turkish democracy.
“We want to end the state of emergency as soon as possible”, he said.
Turkey’s high education board has also forced the resignation of more than 1,500 university deans.
“In a country where our youths are killed with tanks and bombs, if we stay silent, as political people we will be held responsible in the afterlife”, Erdogan said, pointing out that capital punishment exists around the world, including in the United States and China.
Pro-Erdogan supporters waving Turkish national flags during a rally at Taksim square in Istanbul on Wednesday, following the failed military coup attempt of the previous week.
“They (the Turkish government) are gravely violating fundamental principles of the rule of law by arresting thousands of judges and prosecutors and anyone who can vaguely have the label of Gulenist attached to them”, he said.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters that 9,322 people were under legal proceedings in relation to the attempted coup.
Some Western leaders expressed concern that Erdogan, who said he was nearly killed or captured by the mutineers, was using the opportunity to consolidate power and further a process of stifling dissent. It alleged the coup conspirators were loyal to moderate cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who lives in exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, and espouses a philosophy that blends a mystical form of Islam with democracy. About 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and teachers have been suspended, detained or are under investigation since Friday’s military coup attempt.
On Tuesday, foreign media were taken on a tour of government buildings that were targeted by F-16 air strikes, including the headquarters of the Turkish special forces police where 47 officers were killed.
The deadly coup attempt occurred late on July 15 when rogue elements of the Turkish military tried to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government.
Turkey’s Education Ministry has suspended 15,200 personnel in connection with a failed military coup, private broadcaster NTV reported.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, made a series of televised appearances in which he disclosed dramatic details of his survival on the night of a failed coup and raised the specter of reintroducing the death penalty to punish conspirators.
The President praised the reactions to the coup attempt, in which 246 people died and 1,536 were wounded.
Fighter jets late Tuesday hit PKK targets in the Hakurk region, said the state-run Anadolu news agency, quoting security sources.
Advertisement
Erdogan struck a more conciliatory note in his comments to Al Jazeera, saying he did not want to link the issue of US use of Turkey’s Incirlik airbase with Ankara’s request for Gulen’s extradition. Martial law was imposed across the country for three years following a successful military coup in 1980. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the US would follow procedures in a decades-old extradition treaty and called Turkish charges that the USA was harboring Gulen “factually incorrect”.
