AFP, Ankara :
Turkey has arrested more than 35,000 people over alleged links to the group run by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the failed July coup, local media reported Sunday.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the suspects had been placed under arrest since the attempted putsch that fell apart within hours, quoted by NTV broadcaster.
Another 3,907 suspects were still being sought while nearly 26,000 people had been released into “judicial control”, he said.
Some 82,000 individuals had been investigated in total since the coup bid, he told the audience on Saturday at a ruling Justice and Development Party conference in Afyonkarahisar, western Turkey.
Tens of thousands of people have been suspended, sacked or detained in the military, judiciary, police, education sector and media in connection with the July 15 attempted putsch blamed on Gulen and his Hizmet (Service) movement.
The unprecedented purge has come under heavy criticism from Turkey’s Western allies, including the European Union. Brussels has urged Ankara to act within the rule of law, which Turkey insists it is. Ankara accuses Gulen of masterminding the coup, during which a rogue military faction tried to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Gulen-who has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999 in Pennsylvania-strongly denies the charges.
Another report adds: Turkish-backed forces will press on to the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab in Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, emphasizing Ankara’s drive to sweep militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from territory near its border.
The Syrian military, however, said the presence of Turkish troops on Syrian soil was unacceptable and a “dangerous escalation and flagrant breach of Syria’s sovereignty.”
Backed by Turkish tanks, special forces and air strikes, a group of rebels fighting under the loose banner of the Free Syrian Army crossed into northern Syria in August and took the border town of Jarablus from Islamic State largely unopposed. The rebels have since extended those gains and now control an area of roughly 1,270 square km (490 square miles) in northern Syria. While Turkey’s initial focus was on driving Islamic State from Jarablus, much of its efforts have been spent on stopping the advance of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.
“They say, ‘Don’t go to al-Bab’. We are obliged to, we will go there,” Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of an education center in the northwest province of Bursa. “We have to prepare a region cleansed from terror.”
Erdogan also said that Turkey would do what was necessary with its coalition partners in Syria’s Raqqa, but would not work with the Syrian Kurdish fighters.
Turkey has arrested more than 35,000 people over alleged links to the group run by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the failed July coup, local media reported Sunday.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the suspects had been placed under arrest since the attempted putsch that fell apart within hours, quoted by NTV broadcaster.
Another 3,907 suspects were still being sought while nearly 26,000 people had been released into “judicial control”, he said.
Some 82,000 individuals had been investigated in total since the coup bid, he told the audience on Saturday at a ruling Justice and Development Party conference in Afyonkarahisar, western Turkey.
Tens of thousands of people have been suspended, sacked or detained in the military, judiciary, police, education sector and media in connection with the July 15 attempted putsch blamed on Gulen and his Hizmet (Service) movement.
The unprecedented purge has come under heavy criticism from Turkey’s Western allies, including the European Union. Brussels has urged Ankara to act within the rule of law, which Turkey insists it is. Ankara accuses Gulen of masterminding the coup, during which a rogue military faction tried to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Gulen-who has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999 in Pennsylvania-strongly denies the charges.
Another report adds: Turkish-backed forces will press on to the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab in Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, emphasizing Ankara’s drive to sweep militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from territory near its border.
The Syrian military, however, said the presence of Turkish troops on Syrian soil was unacceptable and a “dangerous escalation and flagrant breach of Syria’s sovereignty.”
Backed by Turkish tanks, special forces and air strikes, a group of rebels fighting under the loose banner of the Free Syrian Army crossed into northern Syria in August and took the border town of Jarablus from Islamic State largely unopposed. The rebels have since extended those gains and now control an area of roughly 1,270 square km (490 square miles) in northern Syria. While Turkey’s initial focus was on driving Islamic State from Jarablus, much of its efforts have been spent on stopping the advance of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.
“They say, ‘Don’t go to al-Bab’. We are obliged to, we will go there,” Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of an education center in the northwest province of Bursa. “We have to prepare a region cleansed from terror.”
Erdogan also said that Turkey would do what was necessary with its coalition partners in Syria’s Raqqa, but would not work with the Syrian Kurdish fighters.
