Renowned Turkish writers, academics, journalists and activists have called on the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to end a state of emergency, also known as OHAL, in the country, which was declared in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15.
The intellectuals, who include figures such as veteran journalists Hasan Cemal, Oya Baydar, academics Baskın Oran, Esra Mungan and Binnaz Toprak, human rights activist Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, actor Orhan Alkaya and pro-Kurdish politician Hasip Kaplan, signed a petition that called for the end of the state of emergency.
Introducing themselves as the “joint owners of this land,” the intellectuals said they do not want to be labeled or divided as “Turkish-Kurdish, pious-secular, naysayer-yes-sayer.”
“We say ‘no’ to one-man rule, injustice and unlawfulness, deactivation of the Parliament, suppression of any kind of opposition with pressure and threat and all the victimizations caused by the despotic politics which dismissed hundreds of thousands of public employees, politicians, academics, media and judiciary members from their jobs or arrested them,” the intellectuals said as they called for the end of the state of emergency in the country.
During emergency rule, the government has fired around 150,000 people from public jobs and arrested nearly 50,000 others under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.