Turkish authorities yesterday detained 60 soldiers and issued detention orders for another 128 people in operations targeting the network of a Muslim cleric the government blames for last year’s failed coup, local media reported.
About 50,000 people have been arrested since the failed putsch in July last year and about 150,000 sacked or suspended, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with the movement of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Authorities detained the soldiers in raids focused on the central Konya Province and 32 other provinces, the Hurriyet daily said.
Separately, the state-run Anadolu news agency said detention orders had been issued for 128 people with ties to the publishing company Kaynak Holding, which was linked to the Gulen movement before authorities seized it.
Hundreds of firms such as Kaynak, many of them smaller provincial businesses, were seized by authorities in the post-coup crackdown and are now run by government-appointed administrators.
Of the 128 people being sought, Anadolu said 39 people had been detained so far in an operation carried out in Istanbul and seven other provinces.
On Tuesday, the head of Amnesty International in Turkey was arrested over suspected links to t Gulen, the human rights organization said.
Police arrested lawyer Taner Kilic along with 22 others in the western city of Izmir, all on suspicion of ties to Gulen’s movement, according to a statement on Amnesty’s Web site.
“We are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers, and drop all charges against them,” Amnesty International secretary-general Salil Shetty said.
“Taner Kili has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling,” he said.
The arrests proved how “arbitrary” Ankara’s post-coup crackdown had become, Shetty added.
The organization said it did not believe Kilic’s arrest was connected to his work for Amnesty International, which he has directed in the country since 2014.
The Turkish government claims Gulen ordered the July 15 attempt to oust Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from power.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies the charges.
Additional reporting by AFP
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