Former Justice and Development Party (AKP) Mersin deputy Ahmet Tevfik Uzun, who was detained on Monday morning as part of an operation targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, was arrested on Wednesday.
Uzun was taken into custody in an investigation overseen by the Mersin Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office into a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15.
Uzun was elected to Parliament from AKP ranks in the 2011 general elections and served as a member of Parliament until 2015.
The military coup attempt on July 15 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 the lack of any evidence to that effect.
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.
According to a statement from Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ on May 6, 149,833 people have been investigated and 48,636 have been jailed as part of an investigation targeting the Gülen movement since the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey.