Istanbul - Turkish authorities have
ordered the detention of 275 people, mainly military personnel,
over suspected links to the network that Ankara says
orchestrated a failed coup in 2016, police, security sources and
state media said on Tuesday.
Authorities have carried out a sustained crackdown on
alleged followers of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen
since the coup attempt in July 2016, when 250 people were
killed.
Gulen denies any involvement. The former ally of President
Tayyip Erdogan has lived in self-imposed exile in the United
States since 1999.
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, it said.
The suspects, mostly on active duty, were believed to have
communicated to other Gulen followers through pay phones and to
have received advantages in admission to military schools,
Anadolu said.
In a separate operation, police detained 16 military
personnel the southeastern 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. It said 33 people
had already been detained in the operation spread over eight
provinces.
Anadolu said 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.