Turkey's Erdogan recounts night of coup, mulls death penalty

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a series of televised appearances overnight in which he disclosed dramatic details of his survival on the night of a failed coup and raised the specter of reintroducing the death penalty to punish conspirators.
He told US broadcaster CNN he narrowly escaped death after coup plotters stormed the resort town of Marmaris where he was vacationing.
"Had I stayed 10, 15 additional minutes, I would have been killed or I would have been taken," he said in the interview broadcast late yesterday.
Addressing hundreds of supporters outside his Istanbul residence in the early hours of Tuesday, Erdogan responded to calls for the death penalty with the simple statement: "You cannot put aside the people's demands."

Turkey's state-run news agency says courts have ordered 85 generals and admirals jailed pending trial over their roles in the failed coup attempt. Dozens of others were still being questioned.
Anadolu Agency said Tuesday those formally arrested include former air force commander Gen. Akin Ozturk, alleged to be the ringleader of the July 15 uprising, and Gen. Adem Hududi, commander of Turkey's 2nd Army, which is in charge of countering possible threats to Turkey from Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Ozturk has denied the allegation, saying he neither planned nor directed the coup, according to the Anadolu Agency.
The agency later said Erdogan's Air Force adviser, Lt. Col. Erkan Kivrak, had been detained at a hotel in the Serik district of Turkey's southern province of Antalya.

It says Kivrak was taken into custody while on vacation and he has been transferred to Ankara. No reason was given for the detention.
In a bid to calm markets roiled by the coup attempt and the instability it revealed, Turkey's central bank cut a key interest rate in a bid to shore up liquidity in the economy.
The bank's Monetary Policy Committee said it has reduced its overnight marginal funding rate from 9 percent to 8.75 percent.
Authorities have rounded up thousands said to have been involved in the coup, which killed 208 government supporters and 24 coup plotters. The government maintains that Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, was behind the coup, and has vociferously demanded his extradition.

Thousands of officials suspected of links to Gulen were purged from the judiciary and the Interior Ministry.
Anadolu reported that 257 people working at the office of the prime minister have been dismissed and their identification seized because of suspicions of possible involvement in the coup attempt.