President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dismissed concerns about thousands of public servants summarily removed from their jobs by emergency decree after Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, saying they should work in the private sector and accusing them of betraying the state.
Erdoğan made the remarks in July 2017 during a “July 15 and Human Rights” panel at the ATO Congresium in Ankara.
“They ask, ‘All these people lost their jobs, what will happen to them?’” Erdoğan said. “Let them go work in the private sector, what is it to us, will the state feed them?”
“The state fed them and they betrayed the state,” he added.
The comments targeted people dismissed under emergency decree-laws, known in Turkey as KHKs, during the state of emergency declared after the coup attempt.
The decree system allowed the government to remove public servants from their posts by name, without ordinary disciplinary proceedings or a prior court conviction.
Those dismissed included teachers, academics, judges, prosecutors, police officers, soldiers, doctors, ministry personnel and employees of public institutions.
Many were also barred from public employment, had their passports canceled and faced social and professional blacklisting that made private-sector work difficult.
Erdoğan’s remarks reflected the government’s approach to the purge: treating those dismissed as collectively guilty even before individual criminal proceedings had been completed.
Rights advocates and purge victims said the decrees created a form of civil death, stripping people of jobs, income, mobility and professional status while leaving them with limited and delayed avenues for appeal.
Ankara blamed the coup attempt on the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, and designated it as a terrorist organization. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
