July 15 coup was a grave violation of human rights: Erdoğan

ANKARA

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The July 15, 2016, coup attempt that killed 250 people was the gravest violation of human rights in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, adding that Turkey deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for thwarting the bloody coup with the resistance of the Turkish people. 

“July 15 is an act in which human rights were gravely violated,” Erdoğan said on July 14 at a panel called “Human Rights and July 15.”

Quoting from a research conducted by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdoğan stressed that 250 people lost their lives in the coup attempt.

“Some 47.5 percent of our martyrs were killed by the putschists’ bullets, while 21 percent of them were killed by the bombs dropped from the jets. Nine percent were killed by tanks, while six percent were killed by fire opened from the helicopters,” he said.

Stating that there were only 35 coup plotters killed that day, Erdoğan said they died in a clash that night.

“If Turkey was not a state of law, a country that upholds justice, the tens of thousands of traitors who actively participated in the coup that night would now be in randomly opened mass graves rather than in prisons,” he said, claiming that Turkey was more developed than European countries in human rights issues.

“Nobody can deny that Turkey is more developed in democracy and in its economy than it was 15 years before or even more than many Western countries. The witnesses to the achievements we have accomplished in human rights are our people,” he said.

“If our measures were compared with the way in which other countries, which have not been exposed to even a percent of the trauma that Turkey has experienced, would have reacted, we should receive a Nobel Peace prize,” he added.

Slamming the criticisms directed at the post-coup measures taken by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdoğan defended the dismissals of public officials.

“They are criticizing us for the dismissals. They can go and work in the private sector. It is not our business. The state will not feed them,” he said.

He also criticized the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) for bringing up human rights issues that emerged out of the post-coup measures.

“They put an effort not against terrorists but for terrorists, not against the coup but for the coup,” he said.