The İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued detention warrants for 101 individuals including courthouse employees in İzmir, Manisa, Konya and Kütahya provinces, media reports said on Thursday.
Seventy-six of these people have already been detained, according the reports.
The İzmir-based operation targeted mostly courthouse employees in the four provinces who have alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
15 arrested in Çorum and Van
In a similar development on Monday, 12 people who were recently detained in Çorum province over their alleged links to the Gülen movement were arrested.
The arrestees include six teachers, four doctors, one police officer and one civil servant.
In the eastern province of Van, three out of 18 medical personnel who were detained on Friday were also arrested due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement. Fifteen of the detainees were released.
Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement having denied the accusation of having plotted the coup and calling for an international investigation, Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government launched a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
More than 100,000 people have been purged from state bodies, nearly 43,000 detained and 23,500 arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian.
