Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said the attempted coup was a “gift of God to cleanse the military”.

“This act is a great gift of God to us because the military will be cleansed,” the president said at a press conference in Istanbul, adding that those behind the attempted coup would have to pay for their “treason”.

The Attorney General said at least 60 people – mostly civilians – have died across the country during the coup, as quoted by the daily Hurriyet.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the ringleaders were a group of about 40 senior officers – mostly colonels but also a general – and that some 130 soldiers had been arrested for their involvement in the attempt to overthrow the democratically-elected government.

In his speech from the capital’s Ataturk airport, Erdogan insisted that the coup attempt had failed, and had only involved a small group of soldiers.

He accused those involved in the attempted coup of rising against a government that came to power backed by the vote of the people, adding that they could not accept his victory in the elections.

The current president was elected to power with 51.8 percent of the vote in 2014. Before this he had served as prime minister since 2003.

Erdogan called on military leaders to respect the values of the nation and accused some of them receiving ‘orders from Pennsylvania’, in reference to Fethullah Gulen, an influential Islamic cleric living in exile in the United States after turning against his former ally Erdogan.

The president then addressed the soldiers as ‘children’, warning them they would pay a large price if they took up arms against their ‘parents’.

He added that the military would be “cleansed” after senior military leaders implicated in the attempted coup would be arrested immediately. EFE

Istanbul, Jul 16 (EFE)