The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued detention warrants for 30 people working at Turkey’s Education Ministry and for 17 others at the Transportation Ministry over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the T24 news website reported on Tuesday.
Moreover, 14 teachers were detained in a Malatya-based investigation into the alleged members of the Gülen movement on Tuesday morning. Police carried out operations in Malatya and Adıyaman provinces, and detained 14 suspects. According to state-run Anadolu news agency, the detainees included those who were earlier dismissed from their jobs under post-coup emergency rule.
Meanwhile, political observer and owner of the MetroPoll polling company Professor Özer Sencar, who was detained on Saturday and taken to Tekirdağ province as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, was released on Tuesday, his family has said.
Sencar’s family announced in a tweet sent from Sencar’s personal account that he had been released from detention and thanked people for their support. “Özer Sencar was released just now. We convey our respects and thanks to those friends who paid attention and shared our distress,” the tweet wrote.
Sencar was released from custody after he was detained in a police raid on his home in Ankara in last September over a claim that he was part of the faith-based Gülen movement. Sencar is known for his critical views of both the Gülen movement and the government.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
According to a report by the state-run Anadolu news agency on May 28, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed due to alleged Gülen links since the failed coup attempt. (SCF with turkishminute.com & turkeypurge.com) June 6, 2017
