News / Turkey

Turkey slashes through police force

Tuesday, 04 October 2016 6:26 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 04 October 2016 6:52 AM ]

Police officers stand next to demonstrators protesting in front of the High Education Board against the suspension of academics from universities following a post-coup emergency decree, in Ankara, Turkey, September 22, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Turkey has suspended 12,801 police officers from duty over suspected ties with US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of having masterminded a July coup in the country.

The country’s law enforcement authorities announced the suspensions on Tuesday, saying they had followed an investigation of the police force by the Interior Ministry.

A day earlier, Ankara had also extended by three more months a state of emergency it brought into force after the failed coup.

“The decision on continuing the state of emergency [is] beginning on October 19,” said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus.

The July 15 putsch saw an army faction deploying helicopters and tanks and clashing with government troops and people on the streets of the capital, Ankara, and the city of Istanbul. More than 270 people were killed and above 2,100 others sustained injuries during the subversive push.

A far-and-wide witch-hunt has followed, which has witnessed about 100,000 people being fired or suspended in the military, civil service, police and judiciary, and some 32,000 arrested.

Pennsylvania-based Turkish opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen (Photo by AFP)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to whom Gulen used to be a mentor, has time and again asked the US to extradite him.

“When America asks us to send back terrorists, we ship them as a package but we haven’t seen the same response from our strategic partner,” he said most recently. “You haven’t extradited one terrorist who has lived in luxury for 17 years.”

Gulen has denied having had a hand in the coup.

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