In remarks made during a meeting with attorneys at the presidential complex in the capital Ankara to mark the Lawyers’ Day Tuesday, Erdoğan said there is a need to annihilate adherents of terrorism through forceful measures.
“We need to be decisive to take all necessary measures, including stripping citizenship to deactivate terrorist organization supporters,” he said, adding: “They are not even our citizens.”
“We are not obliged to carry anyone engaged in the betrayal of their state and their people.”
“Supporters (of terror) who pose as academics, spies who identify themselves as journalists, an activist disguised as a politician … are no different from the terrorists who throw bombs,” Erdoğan said.
“But like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they serve the same purpose as the members of the terror organisation. As a nation we need to be careful. No one must commit treachery against the state and the nation behind our backs.”
But Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the government was not planning “for the moment” to strip PKK supporters of their nationality.
“This idea is not ready,” Davutoğlu told reporters during a press conference at the Ankara airport before his official visit to Finland Tuesday night
He said, “If a person aims to cause damage to a country’s people by conducting terrorism, then they have already broken their moral connection with that country’s people.”
“No citizen of common sense can excuse actions of destroying their self as well as other people and undertaking terror attacks. Then their connection with that country must have been severed…We will take whatever action is necessary in the fight against terror, but the idea is not, at the moment, ready to be worked on,” Davutoğlu said.
The president Tuesday also said that security operations against the PKK in southeastern parts of the country will continue until the terrorist group is defeated.
He said the struggle against terrorism has been carried out keeping in mind the morals, conscience and laws of Turkey.
The PKK-listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU-resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.
Since then, over 350 Turkish security personnel have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
Also, Erdoğan said some law offices in Turkey were working as branches of terrorist organization; he criticized some attorneys by calling them “so called attorneys.”
Moreover, he pointed out flaws in some bar associations.
“We need to establish a pluralist structure that enables different voices to express themselves in bar associations and other professional organizations,” Erdoğan said.
“I believe that there is a need to change the election system in professional associations, especially in bar associations,” he added.
The president called on the government and parliament to fix the legislations regarding the associations. “It is possible to be resolved before the end of the year,” he said, adding that he would assist in such a law-making process.
Erdoğan also said attorneys are one of the primary components in a judicial system, which should be strong and honorable for the sake of securing justice in a country.