Keeping up its unyielding post-coup crackdown, Turkey has ordered the dismissal of more than 2,000 police officers and hundreds of members of the military as well as the employees of the BTK communication technology authority.

In an official decree issued on Wednesday, the government also ruled that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan be empowered to appoint the head of the Armed Forces.

The decree was released as part of an emergency regime Ankara has introduced in the aftermath of the July 15 failed coup.

At least 270 people were killed and more than 2,100 others sustained injuries during the botched putsch.

Also on Wednesday, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag (seen below) announced the issuance of another order, paving the way for the conditional release of 38,000 prisoners apparently as a means of making room for new inmates.

Those who are to be released have two years or less to serve and will not include the ones arrested after July 1. The order also makes the convicts who have served half of their prison terms eligible for parole.

Since the coup, some 35,000 people have been detained for questioning, more than 17,000 of them formally arrested to face trial.

The government has alleged that renegade officers in Turkey’s military, who had links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based opposition cleric, staged the coup on his orders. Gulen has denied any involvement and warned that the blame game could be a ploy by the ruling Justice and Development Party to cement its grip on power.

Ankara has, however, convicted Gulen in absentia and been threatening to revisit bilateral ties with the US should Washington fail to extradite the cleric.