Turkey will dismiss people from “many institutions” including the police and military with a decree to be issued late on Friday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was quoted as saying by broadcaster CNN Turk and other media.

Turkey has been under a state of emergency, imposed shortly after a failed coup attempt in 2016, for almost two years, limiting some freedoms and allowing the government to rule by decree, bypassing parliament.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who won another five-year term in a June 24 election and also gained sweeping new powers under a constitutional overhaul, has promised not to renew the state of emergency after its expiry on July 18.

“The last emergency rule decree will be published tonight and there will be dismissals from many institutions. The dismissals will be largely from the police and military,” CNN Turk quoted Yildirim as saying.

Under the emergency rule, some 160,000 people have been detained and nearly the same number of state employees have been dismissed, the U.N. human rights office said in March.

Of those detained, some 77,000 have been formally charged and kept in jail during their trials, Turkey’s interior minister said in April.

Critics of Erdogan accuse him of using the failed putsch as a pretext to quash dissent. Turkey says the measures are necessary to combat threats to national security.

Erdogan will take the oath of office on Monday, inaugurating a powerful new executive presidency that Turks narrowly approved in a referendum last year.

Source: www.reuters.com