The “OHAL” dramatically extends the powers of the President, the Cabinet, and government-appointed governors all around Turkey. Under OHAL, Erdogan and his Cabinet will be allowed to issue executive orders that potentially limit constitutional rights and freedoms. Turkey also evoked Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights on Thursday, which allows countries to temporarily move outside the jurisdiction of the Convention in the case of grave threats to national security.
 
At ThePressProject International, we are initiating “The OHAL Diaries” to follow events in Turkey closely over the next weeks. As part of this project, we will be reporting daily on the progress of the country’s state of emergency, relating further anti-coup efforts as they happen. We will look closely at potential executive orders issued as part of OHAL and the implications of such orders for human rights, social life, and power relations in Turkey. We believe that the intensity of the measures that have already been taken by the government since the failed coup, while potentially justifiable in the face of the grave danger that Turkish democracy has faced, requires a close and scrutinous look at Turkey over the next weeks.
 
Our international team, will be providing you with constant updates on all OHAL related developments. Experts from Turkey, the US and Greece will publish their opinions, analyses and ideas. As ThePressProject is the sole media partner of WikiLeaks, any information coming from them will be integrated and used to throw further light were available. 
 
Will the Turkish government’s efforts be contained to a heavy-handed removal of FETO (Pro-Fethullah Terrorist Organization) and other Gulenist networks from state posts? Or will Turkey’s rulers aim to use the extraordinary measures to achieve a complete,unjustly-achieved, pro-AKP overhaul of Turkish bureaucracy, justifying the critiques who say that a “purge” is underway in the country? We’ll find out the answer in The OHAL Diaries; but here’s what’s been done in the days leading up to the OHAL declaration on Wednesday:
 

Arrests

 
The wave of arrests that started immediately after the failed coup attempt has only intensified as the week has progressed. Over 6,000 soldiers are currently under custody, with over 1200 arrested. Included in this number are 99 Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) generals, almost a third of the Turkish army’s highest-level command. Erdogan’s own military aide is amongst those arrested, and over six dozen students of Istanbul’s Kuleli Military High School have also been detained. 121 members of the country’s police corps were also detained, with 43 arrested. The presidents of the country’s Gazi University in Ankara and Dicle University in Diyarbakir are also under custody.
 
The most high-profile civilian arrests came on Wednesday evening when Alparslan Altan and Erdal Tercan, two members of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, the highest legal organ in the country, were arrested. The exact charges against the judges remain unknown (as is the case with most arrests in the country). The judges of Balyoz and Ergenekon, two massive court cases that had put entire cadres of TSK leadership in jail on fabricated evidence, have been put in jail since Friday. The judges that presided over the two cases have also been arrested.
 
 
1094 other judges and prosecutors have also been detained with 632 arrests, in addition to thirty-four universitylecturers detained and one under arrest.
 

Forced Resignations, Firings

 
While the number of arrests in Turkey since last Friday is dramatic, it is dwarfed by the number of forced resignations and firings associated with the coup attempt.Over 55,000 civil servants have been removed form their posts.
 
What has been most shocking to international observers was the specific and methodical way in which civil servants have been forced to resign or removed from their posts (or arrested, for that matter) without a preceding process of investigation. The methodology of the Turkish government in carrying out the removals suggests that a large-scale investigation into FETO members and Gulenist symphatizers was already in place before the coup attempt. Such a theory perhaps presents no big surprise to those who have been following the bitter conflict between the Turkish state and the Gulenists in the past couple of years.
 
The Ministry of National Education has fired close to 22,000 employees, many of them public school teachers, and revoked teaching licenses of over 21,000 teachers working in private schools. With a total of over 42,000 associated workers fired, Turkey’s education ministry thus constitutes the numerical majority of all removals. Over 700 hundred private schools with suspected ties to the Gulenists have also been closed. Two college presidents (in addition to the two that have been arrested) have also been fired.
 
The Ministry of National Education features so prominently in the anti-coup firings partially because private schools and exam prep courses have long been considered centers of Gulenist recruitment. Allegations that high school and college entrance exam questions have been stolen by, and distributed amongst, Gulenist networks for years also help explain the massive overhaul in the Ministry.
 
Here’s a run-down of other forced resignations and firings:
 
  • Turkey’s Department of Higher Education (YOK) has also asked for the resignation of all 1577 university deans across the country, asked universities to cancel all non-critical international assignments of teaching staff. University presidents have also been asked by the body to draft reports on their administrative and academic personnel, noting any possible connections to Gulenist networks. YOK fired 1577 of its own employees.
  • Around 9,000 employees of the Ministry of the Interior have been fired. Close to 8,000 of these are members of the country’s police corps; but at least 30 governors and a number of other high-level bureaucrats are also included in the number.
 
A particularly well-known name amongst those removed from their posts at the Ministry of Interior was Huseyin Avni Mutlu, who was Governor of Istanbul during the Gezi Park protests in June 2013. Mutlu, as the protests progressed over the course of weeks, was often criticized on social media for extreme police violence under his watch. But he also puzzled many and drew the ire of the pro-government camp when he tweeted: “Youth, I hear it’s a peaceful morning in Gezi Park, with the smell of linden trees and the humming of bees—is it true? I would like to be amongst you.” Mutlu was later recalled to Ankara and placed on passive duty in September 2014.
 
Indeed, Gezi Park itself looms large once again in the political landscape of the country. The government has made no further attempts to go ahead with the reconstruction of the protested-against Ottoman barracks over Gezi Park after the protests in 2013; but the issue is still seen as an unresolved matter by many pro-government factions. Indeed, a day after the coup attempt, Erdogan vowed in a public address to go ahead with the project “whether they want it or not.” While this seems to be an odd, and even ironic, time to bring up the reconstruction of a monumental barracks, the OHAL measures could allow the government to go ahead with its plans without the kind of public protest seen in 2013. Such a course of action, of course, would lead to much resentment, and criticisms that the OHAL was declared not for security reasons but to push forward an AKP agenda would intensify.
 
  • 1500 Ministry of Finance employees, between 200 and 400 employees each from a number of other government ministries, and 492 civil servants affiliated with the Department of Religious Affairs have also been fired.
  • 257 employees of the Prime Ministry have been removed from their posts—10 of these were allegedly computer engineers and technicians who helped maintain a well-known Twitter handle that has been publishing leaked government information for the past few years.
  • 262 military judges and prosecutors have been removed from their posts. Several analysts had noted that a near-total Gulenist infiltration of Turkey’s military courts has been a significant factor in the army’s inability to weed out the FETO activity within its ranks.
  • Three leading secretaries of the National Assembly, and a number of other National Assembly administrators have also been removed from their posts. Allegedly, as the National Assembly was bombed by F16s on the night of the failed coup, these administrators “failed” to turn on the sound system in the parliament and find the keys to the Assembly’s emergency bunkers, which were later found to be in an unusable state.
 

Travel

 
The state of domestic and international travel for Turkish citizens remains chaotic, and in certain cases, restricted. Eligibility to travel is based mostly on which of the three passport types a Turkish citizen possesses: Individuals with standard passports are required a letter of employment as well as a statement from their employer that they can leave the country. Students require certificates of enrollment.
 
Those who have the special passports issued to diplomats, civil servants and their families also need similar letters to leave the country; in addition they must undergo special security screening at the airport.
 
The measures seem to be in place to prevent alleged putschists from fleeing the country. Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek announced that over 1000 public servants allegedly associated with FETO are currently on the run. Eight soldiers have already fled to Greece, where they have been given a 2-month jail term for entering the country illegally as the Turkish government continues to demand their return.
 
Additionally, all academics are banned from leaving the country.
 
In combination with the forced resignations and arrests of a large number of academics, this particular travel ban has drawn international attention. Scholars at Risk, an international network of over 400 universities and colleges in 40 countries, has stated that that it is “gravely concerned about sweeping actions against Turkey’s higher education sector, including forced resignations, suspensions, and travel bans, reportedly affecting thousands of individuals, in Turkey and abroad.”
 

The Death Penalty Debate

 
Another hot issue in the country is whether the alleged putschists should be tried with the death penalty. Turkey abandoned capital punishment in 2004 (and had not executed a criminal since 1984 before that); but the demand for its reinstation has been a hallmark of pro-government rallies following the coup, prompting both President Erdogan and Prime Minister Yildirim to say that they wouldn’t be against it. Head of Turkey’s nationalist party, Devlet Bahceli, has announced that his party would support a bid to reinstate capital punishment, granting AKP to go ahead with the required change in the constitution. 
 
European Union bureaucrats warned Turkey earlier this week that reinstating the death penalty would automatically disqualify the embattled country from joining the Union. After years of stalled accession talks and historically low support amongst Turks for the country’s bid to join the organization, however, the final decision on the matter is unlikely to be strongly influenced by the stance of the European Union.
 

The takeaway: A Rather Forceful Apology

 
The anti-coup operations, and the increasing lack of clarity as to how they are devised, authorized and carried out, are only likely to continue in the next few days. In addition, the newly-declared OHAL now allows the government to limit many human rights and extend the time thousands of detainees will spend in jail while awaiting trial, well beyond the regular constitutional limits. 
 
Turkey is in a position now where the elected government, confronted with an extraordinary threat, is able to exercise extraordinary power–with few able to question or predict its extent and target. Any attempt to do so, at a time when national unity and support for the democratically-elected government against putschists are urged by the government and large segments of the media, can easily be presented as complicity. And to be put it succinctly—there is simply nothing that liberals (whether public intellectuals or private citizens) critical of the anti-coup operations can really do at the time. This is a moment thoroughly controlled by Turkey’s conservatives.
 
International media was quick to call the counter-coup an “extensive purge”; but an objective confirmation of this will perhaps require some time. After all, Gulenist networks were indeed embedded enough in the Turkish state a mount a serious coup attempt, and before that, access and leak (or forge, as the AKP government has long argued) top-level state information including phone recordings of Erdogan himself. Numerous journalists, writers, and a military prosecutor have all argued in the past few years that Gulenist infiltration of state bureaucracy was indeed as deep as the current anti-coup attempts suggest. Ironically, all of those individuals served jail terms in court cases now understood to be Gulenist conspiracies.
 
That said, there isn’t much room for optimism: With over 50,000 civil servants removed from their posts, it is very much possible that many who are simply sympathizers of the exiled cleric, former Gulenists, or even completely unrelated to Gulenist networks have and will continue to be hurt. What is a lot more clear even at this early point is that the counter-coup –justified or not– can result in a near-total consolidation of power for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is in an enviable political position so soon after the single biggest threat to his rule: He is on his way to ending his long war with the Gulenists from a position of power that could not be dreamt of just a week ago.He has consolidated and effectively mobilized his support base, thousands of whom are still keeping watch in squares around Turkey. And of course, he has crushed any possibility of a military intervention into the country’s politics at least in the near future. 
 
Few will remember the inherent humiliation associated with the coup attempt, with the facts behind how it was made possible: A majority of the people who will be found guilty of participating in the attempted coup or lose their jobs by association will be those appointed or promoted under AKP’s watch (if not by its endorsement) in its thirteen years of power. Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), for example, stopped firing officers or holding off on their promotions because of ties to Gulenist networks in 2003—a year after the AKP came to power. The controversial Ergenekon and Balyoz court cases, where almost the entire secularist TSK high command was sent to jail based on fabricated evidence and allowed Gulenists to fill top military positions, enjoyed strong support from AKP at the time. Erdogan himself had dramatically declared “I am the prosecutor of Ergenekon!” in 2008. The case of university presidents is even funnier: Under Turkey’s thoroughly undemocratic higher education system, they are handpicked by the President. So are Constitutional Court judges. Indeed, another famous Erdogan quote, a rhetorical question uttered shortly after the beginning of his government’s troubles with the Gulenists, is this: “What have we not given them that they asked for?”
 
Thus, the ongoing counter-coup cannot be read simply as a democratically-elected government’s fight against an unknown, external enemy. It is a wordless acknowledgement by the AKP that is has thoroughly messed up in how far it went to hand power to its former Gulenist allies, an apology for the years of cronyism and negligence that made possible the events of Friday night. And while we do not yet know for sure, the apology seems like it could very much be on its way to become just as brutal, oppressive, and undemocratic as the fault itself.
 
And of course, there are two conditions for an apology to stand—that it comes from the heart, and that the fault in place is not repeated, that it is actively mended into the future. While the first of these is definitely the case here as any knowledge of the extent and the fury of Turkey’s anti-coup efforts reveal, we are not so sure about the second condition. The fact that the AKP is now in a position where it can rebuild the entire Turkish state in its image, where its mandate seems to swell unquestioned, is a source of comfort for few outside of its active supporters.
 
Erdogan himself, after all, has called the coup attempt “a gift form God” on Friday night as it was still happening. A gift to whom, though?
 
ThePressProject has a long history of asking out of-the-box-questions and we will give it our best shot now. 
 
Turkey is a geopolitical centre of extreme importance to the Western world. More recently, the migrant crisis as well as the position it holds as the so-called latest “cushion” between ISIS and Europe have kept it at the centre of our attention. Follow “The OHAL Diaries” as we scrutinize every possible development and aspect.