A huge cleansing of Turkey’s state and other institutions is continuing as people from all walks of life find themselves hunted down and taken into custody.
At least 111 people were arrested while 180 others were detained over the past 48 hours, according to Turkish news agencies.
Police carried out the operations in at least 11 provinces across Turkey. With most of the arrestees being civilians, those arrested over the past day also included civil servants, police officers, courthouse personnel and lawyers.
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 110,000 people have been purged from state bodies, in excess of 80,000 detained and over 36,000 have been arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian. Critics argue that lists of Gülen sympathizers were drawn up prior to the coup attempt. (Turkey Purge)