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| The Grand Turk |
| Turkey orders detention of 125 police officers - media |
| 2016-10-12 |
| [AlAhram] A Turkish prosecutor on Tuesday ordered the detention of 125 coppers in the investigation of a religious movement the government blames for an unsuccessful military coup, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was the second wave of arrests since Oct. 7 to target suspected coup plotters in the police force. The ruling AK Party, founded by Erdogan, will not harbour members of the Gulen network that Ankara lists as a terrorist organization, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in parliament. "AK Party will not shelter any traitor or terrorist," he said. "We are engaged in the same struggle (against Gulen's network) within the AK Party as we are in ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , generally." No high-ranking AKP members have faced charges in the post-coup crackdown, which has included the arrests of 32,000 people and purge of some 100,000 military officers, police, teachers, judges, prosecutors and others from state jobs. Parliament on Tuesday will vote to extend the state of emergency, introduced in July for three months, until January. The vote is a formality as the AKP commands a large majority of parliamentary seats and the nationalist opposition has already pledged to back the move. Yildirim acknowledged that a small number of mistakes might occur during the crackdown but said the government will not allow "unjust treatment" of citizens. In Tuesday's operation, authorities conducted raids in Istanbul, and among the coppers being sought were 30 deputy police chiefs, Anadolu said. No one was immediately available at the prosecutor's office to comment on the warrants. The Istanbul prosecutor said the officers were suspects because they allegedly used a little-known smartphone messaging app called ByLock, Dogan reported. The state intelligence agency identified at least 56,000 operatives after it cracked ByLock, which Gulen's followers began using in 2014, officials said in August. Gulen, 75, has led a decades-old religious movement whose members sought jobs in the security forces and civil service to expand his clout, authorities say. He fled Turkey in 1999 to avoid trial on suspicion of anti-secular comments. Gulen's conservative network supported Erdogan, who has roots in an Islamist political movement, during the first half of his rule but the two men fell out over disagreements in foreign and domestic policy and revelations about a corruption investigation that targeted Erdogan's inner circle. FETO Turkey's Daesh, says Deputy PM [AA.TR] The Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), believed by the Turkish government to be behind July 15 defeated coup, is ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's ISIS, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Tuesday. "FETO is an organization which is no different from ISIS. We can even say that Turkey's ISIS is actually this organization," Kurtulmus told the 9th meeting of the Eurasian Islamic Council in Istanbul. He went on to say that FETO not only abused the religious sensitivities of the Turkish nation for many years, but also proved that it could "ruthlessly use weapons" against the people. "The whole world saw how FETO used fighter jets, tanks, rifles and bombs on the evening of July 15 to slaughter our people," he said. The July 15 coup attempt martyred over 240 people and injured more than 2,100, leading to a nationwide probe to eliminate FETO sleeper cells which had infiltrated state institutions, including the judiciary and army. Fetullah Gulen, who the Turkish government says heads FETO, has been living in Pennsylvania, U.S. since 1999. |
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