Twenty-four members of the Global Doctors Movement (Küresel Doktorlar Hareketi), a Turkey-based network of physicians advocating access to safe, comprehensive healthcare services, were detained on Thursday due to alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The detainees include doctors, dentists and pharmacists.
As part of the operation, based in Adana province, police raided 32 locations in Adana, Mersin, Şanlıurfa and Kilis provinces.
The Global Doctors Movement is a group that has 20,000 members and many subsidiary associations across Turkey, and has performed more than 300,000 medical examinations and some 15,000 surgeries in more than 40 countries over the past couple of years.
Turkey experienced 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 while thousands have been arrested. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ announced on Wednesday that Turkey has detained a total of 70,000 people and arrested 32,000 on over coup charges since the failed military coup attempt on July 15.