Turkish prosecutors have ordered the arrest of 532 people, including 459 active-duty military personnel. The men are alleged to be linked to religious figure Fethullah Gulen. The Turkish government has long believed that Gulen was behind the failed coup attempt in 2016.
According to Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported on the 26th, the country’s security sources said the same day, the operation in Turkey’s 81 provinces in 62 provinces, in order to resist the “Gulen Movement” on the Turkish army “infiltration.”
Prosecutors in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, ordered the arrest of 258 suspects, including several active-duty soldiers, including four colonels, a lieutenant colonel, nine majors and 24 captains, Reuters reported on April 26. Prosecutors in the western Turkish city of Izmir ordered the arrest of 274 other suspects, most of them military personnel.
In July 2016, an attempted military coup took place in Turkey, Xinhua reported earlier. The government’s designation of a coup plot by the Gulen Movement, a group of religious figures living in the United States and their supporters, and its demand that the United States extradite Him to Turkey was rejected by the United States. Curran denied involvement in the coup.
For years, the Turkish government has identified Gulen’s supporters as infiltrating the police, judiciary, military and other state institutions. Since the attempted coup, the Turkish government has large-scale purges of the “Gulen Movement”, involving the military, the judiciary, education and other sectors, detaining some 80,000 people and suspending or dismissing some 150,000 civil servants and military personnel.
