An Ankara prosecutor has issued detention warrants for 41 employees working for Turkey’s Court of Accounts due to their alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The detention warrants have been issued by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office against 41 people across seven provinces.
Some of the individuals for whom detention warrants have been issued were already suspended from their posts due to alleged Gülen links.
Police launched simultaneous operations across seven provinces on Tuesday morning to detain the 41 people. Twenty out of 41 suspects were held in Ankara while the search for the others is ongoing.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 which killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the AKP government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.
Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, 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 statement from Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on April 2, a total of 113,260 people have been detained as part of investigations into the Gülen movement since the July 15 coup attempt while 47,155 were put into pre-trial detention. (SCF with turkishminute.com) April 4, 2017
