Five days after the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan convened back-to-back meetings with the Council of Ministers and the National Security Council, installing a nationwide state of emergency. According to what he said at the time, the state of emergency, which empowers the government to restrict basic rights and freedoms and govern via legislative decrees, aimed to “eliminate the putschist terrorist organization.”
The measures, however, have gone well beyond the stated aim of purging the putschists of the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO), the term Ankara uses to refer to Gulen followers. Now, eight weeks later, the measures have begun to further complicate Turkey’s long-standing Kurdish problem. Two decisions, announced last week under the state of emergency, have raised the specter of escalation in the conflict spawned by the Kurdish problem.
