The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued detention warrants for some 100 individuals working at the Anatolia Courthouse in İstanbul’s Kartal district, media reports said on Thursday.
Police teams were searching offices at the courthouse on Thursday morning. The investigation is reported to be part of on ongoing witch-hunt against the faith-based Gülen movement.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement having denied the accusation and calling for an international investigation, Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government launched a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
More than 100,000 people have been purged from state bodies, nearly 43,000 detained and 23,500 arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian.