President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has given green light to the establishment of a commission that will deal with complaints from public servants who have been dismissed from their posts as part of a purge launched by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in the wake of a failed coup attempt on July 15, Cumhuriyet daily reported on Thursday.
The proposal for the establishment of such a commission was recently made Chief Justice Zühtü Arslan as the country’s Constitutional Court has received 16,000 individual petitions from people who were dismissed from their posts in the public sector.
The dismissals were made thanks to a state of emergency rule declared by the AKP government in the aftermath of the coup attempt. During the state of emergency, the government issues decrees which have the force of law, hence it bypasses the Parliament.
Turkey experienced a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the AKP government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.
Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, 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.
More than 100,000 people have been purged from state bodies and 32,000 arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian.