Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a three-month state of emergency last night after a meeting with his security council that lasted five hours. The state of emergency will grant Erdogan wide-ranging executive powers in the wake of a failed coup attempt last Friday. "The aim of the declaration of the state of emergency is to be able to take fast and effective steps against this threat against democracy, the rule of law and rights and freedoms of our citizens," he said in a televised speech. Turkey will also suspend the European Convention on Human Rights for at least a month, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told NTV.
Approximately 50,000 public employees have been arrested or fired in purges that began over the weekend. The judiciary, which was among the first sectors to be affected by the government crackdown, has been so hard hit and the purges are moving with such speed that rights groups say laws and due process have been bypassed. “They are not applying any kind of law at this stage,” a Turkish law professor told the Washington Post. “The courts are only a formality at the moment.”
The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withstood an attempted coup on Friday night. Erdogan, who was on the Turquoise Coast at the time, managed to escape a raid on the resort where he was staying and issue public statements despite the temporary takeover of Turkish media outlets by troops participating in the coup; he encouraged his supporters to take to the streets in protest. At least 290 people were killed in clashes between military forces that tried to take over the government and loyalists. Turkish authorities have rounded up more than 7,500 suspected participants in the coup so far, approximately half of whom are members of the military, including senior officers. Several more have been arrested in Greece as they tried to flee Turkey. Another 8,000 police officers have been suspended from work on suspicion of sympathizing with the coup. Supporters of Erdogan rallied in Istanbul on Sunday and chanted slogans advocating for the reauthorization of the death penalty, abolished in Turkey in 2004, for the coup’s supporters. “We cannot ignore this demand," Erdogan said of the calls for executions. "In democracies, whatever the people say has to happen." European officials said today that reinstating the death penalty would end consideration for Turkish accession to the European Union, and the EU commissioner in charge of Turkey’s accession bid noted that the speed with which the arrests were carried out suggests that the Turkish government already had a prepared list of dissidents. "I'm very concerned,” he said. “It is exactly what we feared."
Since Friday night, Erdogan has suggested that the attempted coup was a plot by members of the Gulenist Movement within the military. He called on the United States to extradite Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in the United States for the past 20 years but retains a large network of influence in Turkey. A one-time ally to Erdogan, the Gulenists have become rivals in recent years and in May the Turkish government declared them a terrorist organization. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States will consider any formal request for extradition that Turkey submits, but that he has not seen any credible evidence to suggest Gulen’s knowledge of or participation in the coup. Gulen himself denied any role in Friday’s events.
Widespread arrests and dismissals of those allegedly linked to a failed coup plot in Turkey intensified on Monday as authorities sacked more than 8,000 police officers and officials and raised fears of an all-out purge — eliciting statements of caution from Western officials. – Washington Post
Secretary of State John F. Kerry cautioned Monday that Turkey’s membership in NATO could be jeopardized if abandons democratic principles and the rule of law in a post-coup crackdown. – Washington Post
Signs of testy relations between Turkey’s embattled government and the United States continued Sunday, as Secretary of State John Kerry denounced any suggestion of American involvement in Friday’s coup. – New York Times
The failed coup attempt in Turkey has fueled a sharp conflict with Washington over the fate of a Turkish cleric in the U.S., while posing a broader challenge to the West’s efforts to fight terror and promote liberal democracy. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has accused of inspiring the coup attempt against his government, gave a rare interview on Saturday at his compound here in which he denied involvement in the coup, but compared Mr. Erdogan’s administration to that of the Nazi SS. – New York Times
[T]he commandos who raided the resort where Mr. Erdogan had been staying missed their target. After a brief gunbattle with his presidential security force, the rebels were repelled. Before they ever arrived, Mr. Erdogan had slipped away. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Mr. Erdogan has built a track record of squeezing and periodically blocking foreign social media firms in what critics say is an effort to score political points and muzzle opposition. But his response to an attempted military coup on Friday shows how his playbook has changed: Instead of just censoring and mocking social media, Mr. Erdogan and his AKP party have become adept at using it, too. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
According to Mr. Akyurek, the coup failed in part because its leaders didn’t seize control over the nation’s communications lines—just as they failed to appreciate the deep ways Turkish society has changed since the days when the once-vaunted armed forces could control political developments without violence. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Though he once saw him as a potential role model for Muslim leaders, Obama now considers Erdogan a thuggish autocrat who threatens Turkey's democracy almost as much as the generals who tried to overthrow him. But Obama also understands that he's stuck with Erdogan, a NATO partner he must deal with on critical security issues like the Islamic State and Syria. - Politico
Within hours, the purges of the judiciary and military had begun. While it could take months to determine what this “cleansing” will mean for the future of Turkey, this much is certain: Ankara’s fraught relations with the West just got a lot more complicated. – Politico EU
The crackdown against those responsible for Turkey’s abortive coup moved into the heart of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inner circle on Sunday night while sporadic fighting in two cities signalled that small pockets of mutineers were still resisting arrest. – Financial Times
Turkey's regional allies on Saturday condemned a deadly but foiled coup attempt by a faction of the army against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule, while his opponents abroad kept silent. - AFP
Eli Lake reports: Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has accused a Muslim cleric in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains of plotting this weekend's military coup, and some Turkish officials accuse the U.S. of playing a role. – Bloomberg View
Editorial: U.S. policy toward Turkey should be to support the principle of democratic rule in a stable and cohesive state. The failure of the coup staved off one threat to Turkish stability. What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Erdogan’s revenge does even graver damage to Turkey’s hopes for decent self-government and further destabilizes the world’s most dangerous region. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Editorial: [T]he long-term U.S. interest is in a Turkey that preserves its democratic institutions and civil society. Washington must do its best to restrain any move by Mr. Erdogan to respond to the coup with another crackdown on the secular and liberal forces that came to democracy’s defense. – Washington Post
Amb. Robert Pearson writes: it would behoove the government to try to understand more clearly what actually might have set the stage for such sentiments and to reach out. For the first time in this long period of AKP rule, armed violence has entered the picture. If the government reaction leads to further repression of rights and freedoms, and the existing tensions remain unaddressed, then the door to more violence widens. That’s not what Turkey needs. - Politico
Soner Cagaptay writes: Erdogan brought Turkish democracy to the brink of disaster before the coup; the officers who launched the coup pushed Turkish democracy into the abyss. It will take leaders Turkey currently does not have to rescue it. – Washington Post
Cagaptay also writes: Turkey is at a pivotal point in its history following the failed coup attempt of July 15. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having survived the coup plot, won fresh legitimacy and gained a new ally: religious fervor in the streets. Mr. Erdogan can use this impetus either to become an executive-style president, or he can encourage the forces of religion to take over the country, crowning himself as an Islamic leader. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Kori Schake writes: Absent intelligence clearly linking Gulen to the plotters, it would be a mistake for the Obama administration to hand him over. The United States did well to support an elected government during a coup; it will do likewise well to support the restraints of law against a government using the tools of the state to repress its people – National Review Online
Edward Luttwak writes: Opposition parties all very loyally opposed the coup, but they should not count on Erdogan’s gratitude. The drift to authoritarian rule is likely to continue, even accelerate: As in other Islamic countries, elections are well understood and greatly valued, but not democracy itself. – Foreign Policy
“Put bluntly, we have just entered a new phase in the ever-dramatic and hardly predictable story of Turkish democracy, a chapter that could easily be called the ‘Turkish Winter.’ The coup attempt and Erdogan’s reactions to it will be the key drivers of this phase, but they are merely the symptoms of the real disease that troubles Turkey. The ever-struggling Turkish democracy is dying a slow and painful death, and no single political actor has the will, power, and the right set of incentives to prevent this decay. The road ahead is stark: either an absolute presidency that will not only further ossify but also institutionalize Erdogan’s one-man status, or civil strife that will either take the country down the road of Syria or lead to yet another coup attempt.”
- Aydintasbas and Borshchevskayaon the coup’s consequences