Detention warrants were issued on Thursday for a total of 135 people in İstanbul and the southern Turkish province of Adana over alleged links to the Gülen movement, accused by the government of orchestrating a failed coup attempt last July, Turkish media reported.
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, 60 of 97 people were detained by police in the Kağıthane, Şişli and Sarıyer districts as part of an investigation launched by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office while 37 are still at large.
Police on Thursday detained 38 people in Adana over alleged Gülen links in an investigation overseen by the Adana chief public prosecutor.
The coup attempt on July 15, 2016 killed 249 people and wounded more than a thousand. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (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.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.