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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest emergency decree risks inciting political violence by giving legal cover to pro-government vigilantes, opposition parties and legal authorities warned. The order, declared in the Official Gazette on Sunday, grants sweeping immunity for acting against terrorism or attempts to overthrow the government. Civilians won’t face legal consequences for actions against last year’s coup attempt -- or more importantly -- anything that could be considered its “continuation,” the decree said. Erdogan and his allies regularly accuse political opponents of furthering the agenda of coup plotters, raising concern - and fear - about how broadly the decree will be interpreted. Opposition parties led by the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said the measure provides immunity not just to those who fought back a failed coup attempt by a faction of the military on July 15, 2016, but to supporters of the government intent on stifling political dissent. No Consequences“They’ve paved the way for anyone who claims to be fighting against terrorism to slaughter everybody else,” Ozgur Ozel, a CHP parliament whip, said in televised remarks in the western province of Manisa. “They will unleash vigilantes on us in a future democratic rally and will face no charges.” Ozel’s comments were echoed across Turkey’s normally fractured opposition spectrum. Meral Aksener, a former interior minister who leads the newly established Iyi Party, said in a Twitter post that the decree risks dragging Turkey into a civil war by allowing civilians to use weapons on the pretext of suppressing rebellion. It also legitimizes use of paramilitary forces, according to Ziya Pir, a lawmaker with the pro-Kurdish party HDP. Even Abdullah Gul, a former president who co-founded the AKP with Erdogan, warned of “events that could upset us all” and called for the law to be revised. Its wording is “inappropriate for legal language and is worrying from the perspective of rule of law,” he said on Twitter, in an unusual criticism of his successor’s policies. More than 200 people including civilians were killed on the night of the coup attempt. There have also been widespread accusations of violence against rank-and-file soldiers who were following their commanders’ orders. The decree was vaguely worded in terms of its timeframe and its targets. Party spokesman Mahir Unal said it only applied to events that took place on July 15-16, 2016, but that timeline isn’t spelled out in the order. Ayhan Bilgen, spokesman for the HDP, questioned why the act was written to apply to terrorism if the intent, as Unal said, was only to grant immunity for acts in the two days around the attempted coup. Tusiad, Turkey’s largest business group, called for an overhaul of the decree and a complete end to the state of emergency, citing possible future grievances due to vague clauses in the law. Lawyers ‘Horrified’Metin Feyzioglu, head of the national bar association, said in a video posted on Facebook that he was “horrified” by the decree, which he said appears designed to exempt pro-government actors from the legal consequences of political violence. He called on Erdogan to immediately retract it. “People on the streets are going to start shooting one another in the head,” Feyzioglu said. “You just passed a law that allows citizens to kill one another, to lynch one another, without any punishment or compensation -- what have you done?” Sunday’s decrees add to a long list of government decisions issued under the state of emergency declared after last year’s failed putsch. Emergency rule allows Erdogan to govern with decrees that carry the force of law, bypassing parliamentary and judicial oversight. The head of Turkey’s top court said earlier this year that the court has no authority to rule on the legality of emergency measures. A spokesman for Yildirim’s office declined to comment when contacted by phone on Monday. The office of presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, who’s accompanying Erdogan on a trip to Sudan, also said it couldn’t immediately respond to opposition criticism of the measure. |
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