PHOTO: Turkey’s President Erdoğan speaking with Reuters on Thursday (Umit Bektas/Reuters)
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated that a three-month state of emergency, declared on Wednesday after last weekend’s failed coup, may be extended.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Erdoğan spoke about the declaration which has covered a purge of State institutions, including the detention or suspension of more than 60,000 troops and officials. Among those arrested or dismissed are thousands of judges, teachers, police, and civil servants.
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The President asserts that his former political ally Fethullah Gülen, a cleric now in self-exile in the US, has organized a “parallel system” within a “deep state” seeking the overthrow of the Government. In conversations with President Obama, he has demanded Gülen’s extradition.
Erdoğan told Reuters that a new coup attempt was possible but said it would not be easy as “we are more vigilant”.
The President pointed a a re-structuring of the military after most of the Air Force and part of the Army rose against him:
[We] are all working together as to what might be done, and… within a very short amount of time a new structure will be emerging. With this new structure, I believe the armed forces will get fresh blood.
After all that has come to pass, I think they must now have drawn very important lessons. This is an ongoing process, we will never stop, we will continue very actively, we have plans.
Comparing the Gülen movement to a malignant cancer in the body that could return and spread, he said:
We will continue the fight…wherever they might be. These people have infiltrated the state organisation in this country and they rebelled against the state.
We will do everything necessary to have the highest rate of success…whatever the law allows or admits.
