Claim: Less oxygen, constant fear for Turkish people

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Claim: Less oxygen, constant fear for Turkish people

2016-08-18 07:25 BST
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An article published in TIME magazine claims fear is constant for Turkish civil society after coup attempt on July 15

Citizens attending the Democracy and Martyrs Rally on 7 August 2016

On 15 August 2016, TIME magazine published an article titled The Coup May Have Failed but Fear Still Rules Turkey which was written by Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher Andrew Gardner, who claimed that fear prevails in Turkey in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt launched by an illegal network that the government calls the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETO).

The author claimed that “In the days after the failed coup, as the government crackdown began and the state of emergency was announced, the gnawing fear did not subside – it merely transformed.”

“Members of the public are not the only ones afraid. Journalists, activists and lawyers are petrified of speaking out, lest they, too, become a target of suspicion,” he added.

At the end of the article, Gardner concluded that “The country [Turkey] is gradually returning to normal – but it is a new normal. A normal where there is less oxygen for civil society and where underlying fear is a constant.”

In strict contrast to the gist of the article that, as the title already suggests, fear rules Turkey especially after a state of emergency was announced, a recent survey reveals confidence among the people of Turkey.

According to a survey conducted by A&G Research, whose anticipation of the last general elections was closest to the actual results, 88.1 percent of the participants said they believed that Fethullah Gulen, the US-based leader of FETO, and his clique that infiltrated the military were behind the coup attempt.

While 66.3 percent of the participants said that the announcement of the state of emergency was a correct decision, 71.3 percent expressed their conviction that the Turkish state will be cleansed of the FETO members who infiltrated its institutions.

Around 80,000 people were either removed or suspended from their jobs since the failed coup attempt. The total number of public servants employed by the Turkish state is 3,390,738 according to the statistics of State Personnel Department.

Also, the number of suspended and removed people in the article's hyperlinked page is 45,484 while the article mentioned 82,000.