President Erdogan surrounded by supporters at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul
A total of 265 people were killed in an attempted coup that played out overnight across Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday, among them 161 government forces and civilians.
The army’s acting chief of staff, Umit Dundar, told a news conference on Saturday that 104 so-called coup plotters and at least 47 civilians had been killed.
“Systemic operations are complete” against the attempted coup but mopping up measures could still take hours, Hakan Fidan, head of the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) said, according to a government official.
People have taken to the streets of Istanbul, lining the sides of major roads and holding the red and white Turkish flag in support of the civilian government and against the coup attempt.
Yildirim told a news conference that 1,440 people had been injured and 2,839 military personnel had been detained.
The permanent army chief of staff, Hulusi Akar, was freed by government forces having been held hostage at an army base in Ankara for a period, an official told Al Jazeera.
Speaking at a news conference in Istanbul after arriving to the capital from the coastal city of Marmaris, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attempt to push him from power was “an act of treason” and that those behind the plot would “pay a heavy price”.
He said he intended to stay with his “people” and not go anywhere.
“Shortly after I left [Marmaris] I have been told they bombed the locations where I was,” he told reporters. “I assume they thought I was still there when they bombed those places.”
Speaking to thousands of supporters outside Ataturk Airport on Saturday morning, Erdogan said the coup plotters had pointed “the people’s guns against the people”.
“The president, whom 52 percent of the …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
