VIENNA – It would be unacceptable for Turkey to reintroduce the death penalty in response to Friday’s attempted coup, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said in an interview published on Monday ahead of a meeting of his European Union counterparts.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday after the failed coup attempt there could be no delay in using capital punishment, which Turkey abolished in 2004, and the government would discuss it with opposition parties, Euronews.com reported.
“The introduction of the death penalty, would, of course, be absolutely unacceptable,” Kurz said in an interview with Austrian newspaper Kurier. “There must be no arbitrary purges, no criminal sanctions outside the framework of the rule of law and the justice system.”
