Turkey’s Justice Ministry has announced that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since a failed coup in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
According to data released by the Justice Ministry on Thursday, there are outstanding detention warrants for 8,087 individuals, 152 of whom are military officers, 392 are police officers and three are governors.
Among the arrestees are 169 generals, 7,089 colonels and 24 governors.
A total of 2,431 members of the Turkish judiciary are also among those arrested in the aftermath of the July 15 coup attempt, while 265 of them are at large.
The military coup attempt on July 15 killed over 240 people and wounded a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s President 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 participants of the Gülen movement in jails.