End of Turkey's state of emergency imminent?
This Wednesday the Turkish government will end the state of emergency imposed after the attempted coup in July 2016. Since the night of the coup Turkey has proven its resilience, some commentators say. Others argue that in view of Erdoğan's sweeping powers the country will remain in a state of emergency regardless.
Turks have demonstrated their resilience
The Turkish people have won in the end, writes Ibrahim Kalin, advisor to President Erdoğan and columnist in Daily Sabah:
“Over the past two years, Turkey's perfectly reasonable efforts to eliminate the threat of another coup attempt have been taken out of context by Western reporters, which created a major gap between media coverage and the facts on the ground. ... All in all, we, the Turkish people, came together and got back on our feet as a nation. Nothing will ever change that fact. Today, the Gülenists' invasion of the hearts and minds of honest, hard-working Turks have completely ended. We have broken Fetö's [Gülen movement] siege on our country's public institutions and civil society.”
Easing of tensions only relative
The end of the state of emergency won't really change anything, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung:
“The reasons for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the freshly sworn-in president, wanting things to return to normal are mainly economic: the Turkish chaos has scared away investors and now he wants to lure them back. But what exactly is normality? Erdoğan has turned Turkey inside out in the last two years. he has given it a political system that is tailored to his own interests. The opposition talks of a 'prolongation of the state of emergency using different means'. Erdoğan has just passed more decrees that give him new powers. It's entirely possible that the end of the state of emergency will defuse things to a certain extent, but it doesn't look like everything will take a turn for the better now that the heavy blanket is being aired.”
Coup investigations leave many points unsolved
Judicial proceedings have failed to produce answers to many questions about the attempted coup, Hürriyet Daily News stresses:
“Despite dozens of court cases opened regarding the coup attempt, there are still points that still remained unsolved and need to be clarified. How was it possible for coup plotters to organize such a widespread uprising without being detected by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), the military counterintelligence and police intelligence? Their infiltration into all of them is not enough to explain this deficiency.”