Turkish police on Tuesday carried out simultaneous operations in 18 Turkish provinces and detained a total of 30 civilians as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15.
According to the Doğan news agency, the operations were conducted in line with an investigation pursued by the Batman Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and detainees are accused of “membership in an armed terrorist organization” and “attempting to destroy the unity of the state and nation.”
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 government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, whose views inspired the movement, and the movement having denied the accusation, 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.
The Ministry of Justice announced on Monday that since a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, a total of 41,326 people have been arrested on charges of links to the Gülen movement.
As part of a massive purge currently ongoing in Turkey, a total of 103,850 people have been the subject of an investigation since the putsch, according to official figures.
The state-run Anadolu news agency reported that 2,286 of the 41,326 arrestees are judges and prosecutors. Among the jailed judges, 104 are from the Supreme Court of Appeals, 41 from the Council of State and two are from the Constitutional Court.
A total of 6,325 soldiers have been arrested, 168 of them high-ranking generals. There are 17 governors, 74 deputy governors and 100 provincial governors among bureaucrats jailed on coup charges.
(Turkey Purge)
