Tue Mar 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

Over 45.000 Turkish workers dismissed for bonds with the coup

Most of them are workers linked to Education. There are over 6.000 detainees and almost 500 religious people have been removed from office.

The “depuration” of employees began in Turkey after the failed coup against Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Over 45.000 people have been removed from office, many of them detained, and a hundred is under investigation for suspected bonds to Fetulá Gülen, who Ankara accused of being the one behind the failed coup, in which at least 232 people died.

15.000 employees from the Ministry of Education and 8.777 from the Ministry of Interior have been suspended. 7.850 police officers were fired, as well as 2.745 judges, 492 religious workers, and 257 members of the Prime Minister’s office, Binali Yildirim.

1.577 Turkish universities’ deans have resigned, while 370 employees of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation are being investigated.

Not only, but 1.500 employees of the Ministry of Economics were relieved of duties, plus 614 Gendarmerie soldiers, 47 district governors and 17 province governors.

Also, 6.000 soldiers and 103 generals and admirals remain under detention.

Religion

The Turkish Directory of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), maximum Islamic authority that depends on the State, announced the dismissal of 492 employees, among them Imams and religion professors.

Diyanet also announced it will not allow the execution of Islamic funerals for dead coup perpetrators.

Turkey committed this Thursday to root out the allies of Gülen, who lives in the United States; the government said it sent evidence to Washington on Gülen’s actions, and that the government has requested the extradition of the clergyman several times.

Gülen denied being involved in the coup attempt and suggested Erdogan organized it as an excuse to implement a campaign of repression.

The Prime Minister accused Washington, which responded it would only consider the extradition if there is clear evidence provided of him having a double standard in his fight against terrorism.

Yildirim said the Ministry of Justice had sent a file to the U.S authorities about Gülen, a former ally of Erdogan whose religious movement mixes conservative and Islamic values with a Pro-Occidental perspective, and that he has a web of followers inside Turkey.

“We have more than enough proof (…) about Gülen”, said the Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdag, to the journalists outside the Parliament. “There’s no need to prove the coup attempt, all the evidence shows the attempt of coup was organized under his will and orders”.

The measures taken afterwards and the calls to reinstate the death penalty for conspirators have driven the occidental allies to ask Ankara to respect the country law. Turkey is a member of NATO, which deals with the chaos in the neighboring Syria, so its cooperation in the fight against Islamic State is crucial to Washington.

Ankara claims the followers of Gülën, who lives in a residential complex at Pocono Mountains, in the rural Pennsylvania, have infiltrated the Turkish institutions and are imposing a “parallel State”.

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Originally Published in El País – Tuesday, July 19th.

Translation: Guillermo Zuñiga

 

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