Turkey extends post-coup state of emergency

ISTANBUL: Turkey´s parliament voted on Monday to renew a state of emergency in effect since last year´s failed coup attempt sparked the biggest crackdown in the country´s modern history.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said lawmakers agreed to a three-month extension of the current emergency law, which had been due to expire on Wednesday.

The vote followed the first anniversary of the attempted putsch against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, marked in Istanbul and Ankara by mass rallies and bellicose rhetoric aimed at his opponents. Following the foiled coup -- blamed on US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen -- authorities have arrested at least 50,000 people and sacked more than 100,000.

Erdogan also shored up his position by winning a referendum on enhancing his powers earlier this year. Erdogan, addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters in Istanbul at an anniversary rally on Saturday, said he was thinking of bringing back the death penalty for coup plotters -- a measure that would effectively end Ankara´s European Union membership hopes.