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Eleven other military officers detained over alleged Gülen links in Turkey

Eleven military officers including colonels and majors were detained on Tuesday over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the Doğan news agency has reported.

According to the report, the detentions took place in Mardin, Ankara, İzmir, Sivas, Kayseri and Mardin provinces on Tuesday. Operations continued for others who were on detention lists, the agency reported without giving an exact number.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which launched a war against the Gülen movement following the eruption of a corruption scandal in late 2013 in which senior government members were implicated, carried its ongoing crackdown on the movement and its sympathizers to a new level after a failed coup attempt on July 15 which killed 240 people and injured a thousand others.

 

Although the movement strongly denies having any role in the corruption probe and the coup attempt, the government accuses it of having masterminded both despite the lack of any tangible evidence.

 

Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, but President Recep Tayyip 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.

 

More than 100,000 people have been purged from state bodies, nearly 43,000 detained and 24,000 arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police officers, doctors, court personnel and even a comedian.

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