Turkey’s government has extended the state of emergency for another three months — the sixth extension since the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The opposition is alarmed that the government plans to stick to emergency rule through crucial presidential polls scheduled for next year and has moved to galvanize the streets.

The government justified the extension using the same reason it did for the initial declaration of emergency rule — the threat of terrorism — but the opposition and legal experts are unconvinced.

Senal Sarihan, a lawyer and deputy for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), believes the government is exploiting the putsch. “Even the initial declaration of the state of emergency rested on a [legal] violation,” she said. “Extraordinary regimes can be declared only in case of widespread violence that cannot be contained. The coup attempt of July 15, 2016, unfolded [only] in Ankara and Istanbul and was thwarted in six hours at most.”

She noted that security forces and the judiciary remained functioning at the time and could launch normal judicial procedures against the putschists. “Yet the government declared a state of emergency the following day, and thus the legal violations began with the declaration itself,” Sarihan said. According to her, the continued emergency rule has created a de facto presidential system and perpetuated President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s one-man rule.