Turkish police detain 106 over alleged Gulen links
Turkish police detained more than 100 people, mostly
soldiers on active duty, in an operation on Wednesday targeting supporters of
the Muslim preacher who Ankara says was behind a failed coup in 2016,
state-owned Anadolu news agency reported.
The operation marks a fresh wave in a four-year-old
crackdown targeting the network of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. He denies
involvement in the July 2016 putsch, in which some 250 people were killed.
The Istanbul state prosecutor’s office issued
detention warrants for 132 suspects, 82 of them serving military personnel and
the rest retired or expelled from the armed forces, Anadolu said. So far 106
people have been arrested in raids by counter-terrorism police across 34
provinces, it said.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western province of
Izmir ordered the arrest of 66 suspects, including 48 serving military
personnel, in an investigation of the armed forces.
Since the coup attempt, about 80,000 people have
been held pending trial and some 150,000 civil servants, military personnel and
others sacked or suspended. More than 20,000 people had been expelled from the
Turkish military alone.
Ankara prosecutors on Friday ordered the detention
of dozens of lawyers suspected of operating in support of Gulen.
Turkish and international lawyers’ groups said the
lawyers were simply doing their job representing clients accused of Gulen
links.
