Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a three-month state of emergency to enable the authorities to take swift and effective action against those responsible for last weekend's failed military coup.
Mr Erdogan, who has launched mass purges of state institutions since the coup attempt, said the move was fully in line with Turkey’s constitution and did not violate the rule of law or basic freedoms of Turkish citizens.
The state of emergency, which comes into force after it is published in Turkey’s official gazette, will allow the president and cabinet to bypass parliament in passing new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary.
Mr Erdogan made his announcement in a live television broadcast in front of government ministers after a meeting of the National Security Council that lasted nearly five hours. Mr Erdogan said the pro-government death toll in the botched coup was 246.
Turkey has also banned academics from travelling abroad as it continues to widen a purge that has so far resulted in 60,000 state officials being arrested or suspended.
The latest move against academics, which the government said was aimed at preventing alleged coup plotters from fleeing the country, coincided with an announcement that the education ministry had shut down 626 institutions, a majority of which are private colleges.
More than 20,000 teachers and administrators have so far been suspended by the ministry, with 95 academics removed from their posts at Istanbul University alone, state TRT television reported.
Network of followers
Mr Erdogan blames a network of followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for Friday night’s attempted coup, as soldiers commandeered fighter jets, military helicopters and tanks .
Strengthened by his thwarting of the uprising, Mr Erdogan has vowed to clean the “virus” responsible for the plot from all state institutions. But the depth and scale of the purges have raised concern among western allies that Mr Erdogan is using the backlash against the coup organisers to consolidate his power and stifle dissent.
The 60,000 purged public servants include soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and regional governors. About a third of Turkey's roughly 360 serving generals have been detained, with 99 charged pending trial and 14 more being held. The defence ministry is investigating all military judges and prosecutors, and has suspended 262 of them, according to NTV, while 900 police officers in the capital Ankara were suspended on Wednesday. The crackdown also extended to civil servants in the environment and sports ministries.
Coup plotters
New details continued to emerge about the events of Friday night, when tanks appeared on the streets of Istanbul and the coup attempt began to unfold. In testimony published by the
Hurriyet
newspaper, an infantry lieutenant-colonel said the coup plotters had tried to persuade military chief Hulusi Akar, who was being held hostage, to join the effort to overthrow Mr Erdogan but he had refused.
Mr Erdogan, prime minister Binali Yildirim, ministers, senior commanders and generals had been due to be taken one by one during the night of the coup bid, the testimony said.
Turkey has faced international calls for restraint in its handling of the aftermath of the failed coup. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, expressed “serious alarm” at the mass suspension and arrests of judges and prosecutors and urged Turkey to allow independent monitors to visit those who have been detained.
The foreign ministry in Ankara has said criticism of the government’s response amounts to backing the coup.
