Turkey Arrests Hundreds of Soldiers Suspected of Supporting Gülen

Authorities in Turkey have detained over 200 security personnel suspected of ties to a cleric accused of instigating a failed military coup in 2016. About a third of the detainees are said to be officers representing numerous branches of the country’s military and security apparatuses, and all are suspected of supporting Fethullah Gülen, a popular cleric opposed to the Islamization of the country being fostered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gülen exiled himself to the US in 1999 and resides in a compound in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. He stands accused of being behind the 2016 coup attempt, and in 2017 was stripped of his Turkish citizenship. An estimated 150,000 military and government personnel were relieved of their duties in the wake of the failed coup, and tens of thousands more are in jail awaiting trial. Erdogan’s opponents inside Turkey and abroad have accused him of using the attempted coup as a pretext to crackdown on dissent and consolidate his power.