President Erdogan: Another coup attempt in Turkey is possible

The state of emergency, approved by Turkey’s Parliament, gives more powers to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a statement, High Representative Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Johannes Hahn said they were “concerned” by Turkey’s decision to declare a state of emergency.

The human rights organisation Amnesty International has described the authorities’ actions as “a crackdown of exceptional proportions”.

He and the cabinet will be able to enact laws bypassing parliament; the constitutional court will be unable to challenge them; there could be restrictions on publications and freedom of assembly; and broader powers of arrest.

For some Turks, the state of emergency raised fears of a return to the days of martial law after a 1980 military coup, or the height of a Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s when much of the largely Kurdish southeast was under a state of emergency declared by the previous government.

He said Turkey should keep the state of emergency only for as long as necessary “and then immediately end it”. “It isn’t martial law of 1990s”, he wrote on Twitter.

Presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday that the United States should stop letting the extradition of Fethullah Gulen be a problem between Turkey and the US.

Markets were less confident. The lira currency was trading near a new record low on Thursday, while the main stock index tumbled 4.4 percent. Ankara invoked its right to suspend its obligations temporarily under the European Convention on Human Rights.

“What we’re seeing especially in the fields of universities, media, the judiciary, is unacceptable”, she said, apparently referring to detentions and dismissals of teachers and judges, bans on travel for academics and the detainment of journalists.

Earlier, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged Turkey to maintain a sense of proportionality in its response to the coup attempt.

But Erdogan, who has raised the possibility of reinstating the death penalty in Turkey to punish coup leaders, suggested in his comments to Reuters that the emergency was also aimed at eradicating supporters of Gulen in Turkey.

“The current allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees and arbitrary arrests already point to serious violations of human rights”, he said.

“This state of emergency is not a curfew”.

“The lynching has started”, said Beyza Ustun, an official of the Kurdish-led, People’s Democratic Party.

Some detained soldiers have been shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall.

He said the government is going after those who organized and carried out the coup. “With this new structure, I believe the armed forces will get fresh blood”, Erdogan said.

President Barack Obama called Erdogan on Tuesday.

Speaking to A Haber news channel, Kalin said the extradition of the leader of the FETÖ terrorist organization, Fethullah Gulen, was not a new development and it had been on the table for about one and a half years.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies any involvement in the putsch.

The putsch and the purge that has followed have unsettled the country of 80 million, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran, and a Western ally in the fight against Islamic State.