Yet another shocking news from Turkey. The deputy prime minister and government spokesman in Ankara, Numan Kurtulmus, has announced his intention to suspend the European Convention on human rights, "as France has done", underlined the politician.
In parallel with the announcement, the purges continue. The arrest of Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a journalist and human rights lawyer, registered in Erdogan's alleged black list spread on Twitter in recent days, caused a stir in Istanbul. The man was arrested along with his wife.
We also recall that, after last Friday's attempted coup, Turkish President Recep Tayyp Erdogan declared the "State of emergency for three months” based on Article 120 of the country's Constitution. The measure confers absolute power to the government and to Erdogan.
“There have been many arrests in recent days – Erdogan had previously said on Turkish television – and more names will arrive in the next few days. We're not done yet. But we remain in the system of parliamentary democracy, we will never leave it”.
Yet, immediately afterwards, the President harshly replied to the EU, which for days has been reminding him of the incompatibility between the death penalty and the accession procedure: "For 53 years - recalled Erdogan - we knocked on the doors of the European Union and they left us outside, while others entered. If the people decide for the death penalty and Parliament votes for it, I will approve it".
And again: “Is an attempted coup – insisted Erdogan – a crime or not? It is. It is a crime against the state and the state has a duty to find the guilty and hand them over to the judges who, in a rule of law, judge them in accordance with the law".
Meanwhile, continue the wave of arrests and purges indiscriminate throughout the country. For all those involved in the regime's roundups, the accusation is of links with Fetullah Gulen, a preacher exiled in the US and a former ally of Erdogan, now accused by Ankara of being the hidden mastermind of the attempted coup.
Accusation reiterated tonight in an interview with Al Jazeera, when the president spoke of a "terrorist organization", as the preacher Gulen's network has repeatedly defined, a "minority that wanted to impose its will on the majority". A plan, Erdogan openly accuses, “in which some foreign country may also have been involved".
The reference seems to the address of the United States, allies of Turkey in NATO yet considered in some way accomplices of Gulen, whose extradition Ankara is asking.
