Turkish police launched an operation today to arrest 70 soldiers accused of links to the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen alleged to have orchestrated last year’s attempted coup.
Operations targeting supporters of cleric are continuing on a daily basis some 15 months after the failed putsch. Gulen has denied involvement. In the last week alone, around 800 people were held over alleged ties to him.
Among those targeted in the police raids, focused in the central Turkish city of Konya but launched simultaneously across seven provinces, were two colonels, seven captains and 36 lieutenants, the Dogan news agency reported.
Sixty-two of the suspects were in the air force, some of them pilots, it added. Police were conducting searches of their homes and places of work.
