<p>Turkey announced last week that it had fired 10,000 civil servants and shut down 15 media outlets due to suspected associations with terrorist organizations and Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric Ankara blames for orchestrating the <a href="https://punchingbagpost.com/merciless-purge-in-turkey-after-failed-military-coup/" target="";_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>failed military coup</strong></a> that rocked Turkey in July. ;</p>
<p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the coup a &ldquo;gift from God&rdquo; and declared the uprising &ldquo;a reason to cleanse our army.&rdquo; ;Over 7,000 general-rank military personnel were arrested and more than 8,000 military officers and at least 30 town governors were sacked during the &ldquo;cleanse&rdquo; immediately following the coup. ;Tens of thousands of public employees, many of them teachers, were also fired. ;</p>
<p>According to two executive decrees published on Saturday, thousands of teachers, academics, prison guards, health workers, and forensics experts were among the latest group to be sacked. ;A total of 15 wires, newspapers, and magazines were closed, and Erdogan ;has stripped the nation&rsquo;s universities from the ability to elect their own rectors.</p>
<p>The state of emergency declared after the coup has been extended into January, but Erdogan argues that authorities need more time to expunge the threat posed by Gulen&rsquo;s so-called network. CHP lawmaker Lale Karabiyik says Erdogan&rsquo;s latest move was a misuse of the emergency rule decrees and insists that it is a coup on higher education.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that ;Erdogan&rsquo;s rash policies have divided the country, and his ongoing purge raises concerns about the functioning of the nation. ;</p>
<p>&ldquo;What the government and Erdogan are doing right now is a direct coup against the rule of law and democracy,&rdquo; argues MP Sezin Tanrikulu of the CHP (Republican People&rsquo;s Party).</p>
<p>The city of ;Diyarbakir erupted in protest earlier this week as co-mayors Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli were detained and then arrested for alleged membership in a terrorist organization. ;Police used rubber pellets to break up crowds of protestors, and witnesses say the city has been largely without Internet for several days. ;</p>
<p>The extent of Erdogan&rsquo;s crackdown has many worried that Erdogan is using the failed coup as an excuse to eradicate all dissent and accomplish his own goals &ndash; including the installment of the death penalty and perhaps the <a href="https://punchingbagpost.com/erdogan-continues-to-purge-turkey-targets-education-system/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Islamification of Turkish educaiton</strong></a>. ;</p>
<p>The ruling government argues that his actions are justified given the fact that over 240 people died in the attempted uprising.  ;</p>
<p>Erdogan is ;no friend to the US or to Europe, but we must remember that Turkey is a NATO partner with access to nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, ;Ankara continues to demand that the US arrest and extradite Gulen &#8211; while the cleric (now living in Pennsylvania) insists he had ;nothing to do with the coup. ;</p>