Alleged Gülen supporters: Turkey orders arrest of more than 200 soldiers

Even three years after the coup attempt, the mistrust of the Turkish government in their own people does not stop. The Turkish authorities have ordered the arrest of 223 military personnel for alleged links to the failed 2016 coup.

The affected army, navy and air force soldiers come from 49 Turkish provinces and Northern Cyprus. They are accused of connections to US-based preacher Fethullah Gülen.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic Conservative Development and Justice Party (AKP) has long been allied with the movement of the Islamic preacher Gülen before Gülen and Erdogan defeated in 2013 in the struggle for posts and power. Today, Erdogan accuses the religious brotherhood of infiltrating state institutions and trying to overthrow it in the July 2016 military coup. Gülen rejects this.

The Gülen movement is now considered a terrorist organization in Turkey. On this basis, more than 77,000 people have been detained since the coup attempt and about 150,000 state employees have been released or suspended. Hundreds of soldiers were among them in recent years.

Critics accuse the government, in addition to actual participants in the coup, innumerable innocent people and not to protect the rights of the accused.