Turkish authorities have ordered the detention of 275 people, mainly military personnel, over suspected links to Fethulah Gulen and the network that the government says orchestrated a failed coup in 2016.
The Turkish authorities have carried out the sustained crackdown on the alleged followers of the US-based Muslim cleric, Gulen who was accused of masterminding the July 2016 failed coup which killed 250 people.
Gulen, who was a former ally of President Tayyip Erdogan has denied involvement in the coup.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, has been labeled enemy number one of the Turkish government.
The Police operation was coordinated from the western city of Izmir and targeted people in 22 provinces, state-owned Anadolu news agency said.
The Police have already detained 145 of the suspects.
The suspects, mostly on active duty, were believed to have communicated to other Gulen followers through pay phones and have received advantages in admission to military schools, Anadolu said.
In a separate operation, the Police detained 16 military personnel in the south-eastern city Diyarbakir over the weekend, security sources said.
On Tuesday, a local court jailed six of them pending trial and freed 10 others, the sources added.
Istanbul Police said prosecutors had ordered the detention of 44 military personnel, including a major and three lieutenants, as well as doctors and teachers. All of them have been accused of having link to Gulen.
It said 33 people had already been detained in the operation spread over eight provinces.
Anadolu said the Police had also detained 25 out of 32 suspects from the air forces as part of another operation.
It said detention warrants were issued for eight people in the gendarmerie forces, including a colonel.
Turkey’s Western allies have criticised the scale of the crackdown, while Ankara has defended the measures as a necessary response to the security threat.
Erdogan has for years accused Gulen’s supporters of establishing a “parallel state” by infiltrating the police, judiciary, military and other state institutions.
Since the coup attempt, about 80,000 people have been held pending trial and some 150,000 civil servants, military personnel and others sacked or suspended. (Reuters/NAN)
