Report : almost 100 people were arrested by Turkish police with claims having relations with Gulen
State-owned Anadolu news agency declared that Turkish police arrested more than 100 people, mostly soldiers on active service, and this act enter in an operation on Wednesday that targeting supporters of the Muslim preacher who Ankara claims that he was responsible to a failed coup in 2016.
In fact, the operation indicates a new step in a four-year-old crackdown targeting the network of the cleric Fethullah Gulen based on the US, and he rejects its involvement in the July 2016 coup, in which almost 250 people had been killed.
Anadolu reported that the Istanbul state prosecutor’s office declared the arrest order for 132 suspects, 82 of them working in military personnel and the rest retreated or discharged from the armed forces. It added that 106 people have been detained in attacks by counter-terrorism police in 34 provinces
Moreover, prosecutors in the western province of Izmir issued on Tuesday detention warrants of 66 suspects, including 48 workings in military personnel, in an inquiry of the armed forces.
Otherwise, since the coup attempt, approximately 80,000 people have been detained for trial and almost 150,000 civil servants, military personnel, and others sacked or excluded. More than 20,000 people had been discharged from the Turkish military alone.
Furthermore, Ankara prosecutors ordered on Friday the arrest of dozens of lawyers suspected of operating in support of Gulen, while Turkish and international lawyers’ groups reported that the lawyers were just doing their work representing clients accused of Gulen relations.
