A total of 37 people, including businessmen and civil servants, have been detained as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15.
Turkish police conducted simultaneous raids in eight Turkish provinces on Saturday, according to the Cumhuriyet daily. So far, eight of the detainees have been arrested by a court, while 15 others were released pending trial.
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 government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, whose views inspired the movement, and the movement having denied the accusation, 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 120,000 people have been purged from state bodies, in excess of 80,000 detained and over 40,000 have been arrested since the coup attempt.
(Turkey Purge)