Turkish government spokesman Numan Kurtulmuş said 143,420 public employees had been dismissed or suspended since Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, giving one of the government’s broadest official summaries of the purge one year after the failed takeover.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Kurtulmuş said 111,240 public servants had been dismissed from their jobs and 32,180 had been suspended.
The figures meant that about 3.5 percent of Turkey’s public workforce had been removed from duty or suspended during the state of emergency declared after the coup attempt.
Kurtulmuş said the government had issued 26 emergency decree-laws during that period.
Emergency decree-laws allowed the cabinet to dismiss public employees, close institutions, seize assets and restructure parts of the state without ordinary legislative procedures.
The state of emergency, first declared after the coup attempt, was extended for another three months.
Kurtulmuş said about 6 million people took part in official commemoration events marking the first anniversary of July 15.
The government presented the commemorations as a show of national unity and public resistance to the coup attempt.
Critics saw the same period as the consolidation of emergency rule and the normalization of mass punishment through administrative decrees.
Kurtulmuş also said 966 companies had been seized and 4,888 properties belonging to those companies had been transferred to the Finance Ministry over suspected links to outlawed organizations.
The measures formed part of a purge that reached the military, judiciary, police, schools, universities, ministries, municipalities, media outlets and private companies.
Many people were dismissed by decree without an ordinary court ruling, creating a class of public employees known in Turkey as KHK victims, after the Turkish abbreviation for emergency decree-law.
The government said the measures were necessary to remove security threats from the state after the coup attempt.
Rights advocates and dismissed public employees argued that the decrees imposed collective punishment, denied due process and treated accusation or association as enough to end careers and seize property.
“We are engaged in positive negotiations with Russia regarding a missile defense system. Turkey’s military presence in Qatar is not new, and a joint military exercise will take place there in accordance with a schedule to be determined in the coming days.”
Supreme Military Council preparations
“The Supreme Military Council is proceeding under its routine schedule, and detailed preparations are currently underway.”
