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Detention warrants issued for 70 police officers over coup charges

As part of an ongoing purge in Turkey, detention warrants were issued on Thursday for 70 police officers over alleged coup charges.

The police conducted operations against suspect colleagues in Ankara and four other provinces.

Since a failed coup on July 15, Turkey has dismissed over 100,000 people from public service and arrested more than 40,000 on coup and terror charges.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting the police force since December 2013 when twin corruption investigations implicated his family. Then-Prime Minister Erdoğan held the Gülen movement responsible for the corruption investigations, labelling them as coups. A reorganization within the police force has resulted in the dismissal of tens of thousands of police officers over alleged links to the Gülen movement.

New recruitments to replace the dismissed police officers were mostly based on references and interviews since the police academy was shut down after the corruption investigations against the government.

On Dec. 19, a police officer named Mert Altıntaş who entered the police force in 2014, assassinated the Russian ambassador to Ankara after chanting radical slogans of the Al Nusra Front in Syria.

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