Turkey should not be using democratic institutions to undercut human rights, the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has said.

“We are making it very clear to our Turkish friends – we are fully behind the institutions, the democratic institutions, the legitimate institutions,” Reuters quoted Mogherini as saying after remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Thursday.

“But there is no excuse, there is no way in which the reaction can undermine fundamental freedoms and rights,” Mogherini said. She described as unacceptable the measures taken by the authorities in the fields of judiciary, education, and media.

Thousands of civil servants, university deans, teachers, soldiers and magistrates have been dismissed or detained since last week’s failed coup attempt in Turkey.

Turkey will suspend the European Convention on Human Rights during a state of emergency it declared after the failed coup, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said earlier on Thursday.

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