DUSHANBE, July 21, 2016, Asia-Plus – International media outlets report Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has declared a three-month state of emergency in the country in the aftermath of the coup attempt last Friday.
The decision, announced in a televised press conference on Wednesday night, reportedly came after marathon meetings of the country’s National Security Council and the Cabinet in Ankara.
“State of emergency is not against democracy, the rule of law and freedom,” Erdogan said, adding that the country would not compromise on democracy.
The announcement will raise further concerns about restrictions on freedoms and rights in Turkey, which was shaken by a coup attempt on Friday that saw tanks enter the streets of Ankara and Istanbul and very nearly ousted the Turkish government, according to
The Guardian
.
It also comes as concerns grow over the scale of the ensuing crackdown that has targeted thousands of judges, civil servants, teachers, police officers and soldiers, and amid widespread fears of growing authoritarianism on the part of Erdogan.
Turkish officials have insisted that the measures are necessary to preserve security and stability as the country grapples with the coup’s aftermath and investigates how it came about.
Erdogan said the move was necessary to allow “swift and effective” measures against the Gulen movement, which he claims was behind the uprising, and to “eliminate the threat against democracy”. Europeans “have no right to criticize” the decision to enforce a state of emergency, he said.
The Guardian
says the meeting between Erdogan and senior staff at a national security summit in Ankara was the first time they have come together since the attempted putsch, which killed more than 200 people and wounded thousands, and which the government has blamed on followers of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric in Pennsylvania.
Some 60,000 bureaucrats, soldiers, policemen, prosecutors and academic staff have come under the government’s spotlight, many of them facing detention or suspension over alleged links to the Gulenist movement and the coup plotters.
Earlier on Wednesday, the government had imposed a work travel ban on academics, which, a senior Turkish official said, was a temporary measure as accomplices of the coup plotters in universities were a potential flight risk.
All 1,577 deans of public and private universities in Turkey submitted their resignations at the government’s urging. This came after 20,000 teachers and administrators were suspended from their jobs as a result of the coup, along with 6,000 soldiers and more than 2,700 judges and prosecutors, and dozens of senior generals accused of involvement in the coup.
The scale of the crackdown has prompted the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, to express “serious alarm”, urging the Turkish authorities to respect human rights in the aftermath of the coup.
