Turkish authorities on Tuesday issued detention warrants for a total of 132 people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The Bursa Chief Prosecutor’s Office issued detention warrants for 102 people, including former police officers, soldiers and military school cadets, while the prosecutor’s office in Ankara issued detention warrants for 30 people, including sailors from the Turkish Naval Forces.
Sixty-six people were detained in police operations conducted simultaneously in 23 provinces.
Turkish authorities accuse the Gülen movement of orchestrating a coup attempt in July 2016, although the movement strongly denies any involvement.
Turkey has detained 160,000 people and dismissed nearly the same number of civil servants since the failed putsch, Reuters reported, citing a United Nations statement in March. Of that number, more than 50,000 have been formally charged and put in pretrial detention.
Turkey’s Western allies and human rights groups have criticized the scale of the crackdown, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s critics say he is using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent, a charge he denies.
Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) say the measures are necessary to combat threats to national security. (turkishminute.com)
