Turkey tightened the noose around its citizens over the weekend as the government expanded their post-coup crackdown by passing two decrees that dismissed more than 10,000 civil servants and suspended nearly 15 media outlets with Kurdish leaning, KLKNTV reported.
The media outlets are suspected to harbor links with "terrorist organizations" and U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who was accordingly behind the failed coup in July, Reuters reported.
As President Tayyip Erdogan went after the network of Gulen, over the past few months, at least 100,000 people were sacked or suspended and 37,000 other were arrested in a crackdown.
The crackdown on civil servants included academics, teachers, health workers, prison guards and even forensic experts who were informed of their dismissal through two new decrees published on the Official Gazette late Saturday, Reuters reports.
KLKNTV provided the breakdown of the dismissals, including 2,534 personnel from the Justice Ministry, 2,219 from the Education Ministry, 2,774 from the Health Ministry, 1,267 from higher education institutions and 101 from the armed forces. The remaining 1,236 dismissals were across several different government departments and agencies.
Turkey, soon after the failed July 15 coup attempt, imposed a state of emergency on its people, allowing the government to control by "decree", which virtually nullifies parliamentary involvement.
The decrees are often used to suspend hundreds of people in the public sector, on the charge that they are linked to terrorist organizations, KLKN reports.
Opposition parties are alarmed and calls the crackdown a coup in itself, the Reuters reports, causing them to question the state.
"What the government and Erdogan are doing right now is a direct coup against the rule of law and democracy," Sezgin Tanrikulu, an MP from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said in a Periscope broadcast on twitter.
The west largely fears that Erdogan is using the emergency to wipe out any dissent. Erdogan on the other hand, justifies his actions after he was attempted to be overthrown by a coup attempt in July, in which 240 people lost their lives, said the Reuters.
