Spokesperson for the Turkish presidency İbrahim Kalın has said another “democracy watch” will commence on July 15 to commemorate the anniversary of a failed coup attempt last year, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday.
Kalın, who shared the details of one-week-long events to be held across Turkey on the anniversary of the failed coup, referred to the call of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who, he said, would invite people to go out into the streets as they did during the coup attempt.
“The president will take part in certain events in Ankara and Istanbul,” said Kalın.
The military coup attempt on July 15 killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President 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.
According to a report by the state-run Anadolu news agency on May 28, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed due to alleged Gülen links since the failed coup.