“The package does not relieve the economy and also does not diminish the risk which Turkey faced through the state of emergency,” said Ayhan Bilgen, spokesperson for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a press conference on Wednesday.
Although the state of emergency will not be extended for another three months, he warned “a three-year extension is coming.” The bill is likely to be passed on Monday with the votes of AKP and its nationalist ally MHP.
Under the AKP’s new package, the duration of detention will be extended from five days to 12 days without charge, local government will have more powers, and civil servants found to have links with “terrorist groups” will be dismissed.
The state of emergency was first imposed a few days after the failed military coup of July 2016, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government barely survived. It was then extended by an extra three months, seven times.
Erdogan has blamed the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen who fled to the United States in the nineties, but Gulen and his Hizmet Movement have denied the claims.
During Turkey’s June 24 presidential and parliamentary elections, Erdogan and his rivals promised to lift the state of emergency. Erdogan also said he would reimpose it if there is a threat on the country.
Restoring respect for human rights
In a tweet on Wednesday, Fotis Filippou, Amnesty International’s campaigns director for Europe, said Turkey needs “systematic action to restore respect for human rights, allow civil society to flourish again and lift suffocating climate of fear”.
“Whilst the lifting of the two-year state of emergency is a step in the right direction, it needs to be accompanied by urgent measures if it is to be anything more than a cosmetic exercise,” he added in a statement.
Andrew Gardner, a researcher at Amnesty’s Strategy and Research center in Turkey, also tweeted on Wednesday, saying the end of the state of emergency “should be used as an opportunity to return to human rights principles and the rule of law”.
“However, the government appears determined to continue the crackdown under another name,” he added.
Two-year purge
According to Amnesty, more than 70,000 people have been detained, more than 150 journalists jailed, more than 360 academics “prosecuted for peace appeal,” more than 1,500 institutions closed down and at least 130,000 civil servants dismissed, along with more than 170 media outlets closed down.
It is not easy to verify these numbers, as each institution gives a different figure.
The state of emergency did not only target FETO or Hizmet members, but also HDP members, including its former co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag who were arrested a few months after the coup. Demirtas ran for the presidency on June 24 but gained only about eight percent of the vote.
With new executive powers introduced under constitutional reforms, the opposition fears Erdogan can now exercise many of the powers he could previously only enact under the state of emergency.
