A witch-hunt carried out by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) targeting the Gülen movement will extend to AKP politicians at the beginning of May, claimed Saygı Öztürk, a columnist for the Kemalist Sözcü daily.
“It is said that some politicians will be detained in the early days of next month. Their names are mentioned one by one. A female politician whose name has frequently been on the agenda recently is also mentioned,” Öztürk wrote in his column in Sözcü on Sunday.
Öztürk also claimed that a delay in the publication of a Parliamentary Coup Investigation Commission report is linked with operations targeting some politicians. According to Öztürk, the names of the politicians will be added to the report after the operations are completed.
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 AKP government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced on April 2 that a total of 113,260 people have been detained, 47,155 people including 10,732 police officers, 7,631 military officers, 2,575 judges and prosecutors and 208 local administrative officials were arrested as part of investigations into the Gülen movement since the putsch.