Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has said he would hang the suspects of a botched coup attempt in July 2016 in one month, complaining that coup trials were languishing due to the legal system, the Cumhuriyet daily reported on Monday.
Yıldırım responded to the questions of media representatives during a live broadcast on the Habertürk, TRT Haber, NTV, CNN Türk and A Haber television channels.
Referring to the coup attempt, which, according to the Turkish government, was organized by the Gülen movement, Yıldırım said he would not wait long to punish the suspects.
“The courts are giving the verdict, but if it was left to me I would hang them all in a month. The legal system is dragging this out. People are becoming annoyed. Trust in the judiciary is decreasing as the decision is prolonged. It should not be. The case has become mature enough, their hopes will fade away by the end of the year. … There are around 50,400 people under arrest and just as many have been released on judicial probation.”
Meanwhile, Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Ceyhun İrgil has said the Turkish government is blacklisting employees who worked at places closed down by government decree and employees who were fired by their employers due to alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
According to a Kronos online news portal’s report on Monday, İrgil said the Ministry of Labor and Social Security added a code called the “36 code” to identify people accused of Gülen links. İrgil said employees of educational institutions that were closed down by government decree were also similarly blacklisted.
“This code is registered in the social security accounts of all employees of educational institutions that were opened with permission from the government and were operating under government control until they were closed down by KHKs [government decrees],” said İrgil.
While many people are unaware of the code registered in their social security accounts, employers reject people based on the “36 code.” Criticizing the blacklisting of people about whom there are no allegations of crime, İrgil called on the government to announce the number of people who had been blacklisted because, he said, it is an official blacklisting operation.
Turkey survived a controversial military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that killed 249 people. Immediately after the putsch the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.
According to a tally by TurkeyPurge.com, over 146,000 people, including some 10,000 soldiers, have been dismissed from government jobs, more than 122,00 detained and almost 57,000 arrested over coup charges. (SCF with turkishminute.com)
