ISTANBUL, Turkey: Turkish police launched an operation on Tuesday to arrest 70 soldiers accused of links to the US-based Islamic preacher alleged to have orchestrated last year’s attempted coup, the private Dogan news agency reported.
Operations targeting supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen 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, Dogan said.
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.
More than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over links to Gulen, while 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the public and private sectors since the July 15 coup attempt, in which 250 people were killed.
Some of Turkey’s Western allies and rights groups have voiced concern that the government is using the coup investigations as a pretext to crack down on dissent.
Ankara argues that only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen’s network, which it says infiltrated institutions such as the military, judiciary and schools.
A sharp escalation in tensions between Turkey and NATO ally the United States this week was triggered by the arrest of a Turkish employee of the US consulate in Istanbul whom Ankara accuses of links to Gulen.
Turkish police seek 70 military officers over Gulen links
Turkish police seek 70 military officers over Gulen links
School materials enter Gaza after being blocked for two years, UN agency says
- Thousands of kits, including pencils, exercise books and wooden cubes to play with, have now entered the enclave, UNICEF said
GENEVA: The UN children’s agency said on Tuesday it had for the first time in two-and-a-half years been able to deliver school kits with learning materials into Gaza after they were previously blocked by Israeli authorities.
Thousands of kits, including pencils, exercise books and wooden cubes to play with, have now entered the enclave, UNICEF said.
“We have now, in the last days, got in thousands of recreational kits, hundreds of school-in-a-carton kits. We’re looking at getting 2,500 more school kits in, in the next week, because they’ve been approved,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into the Gaza Strip, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Children in Gaza have faced an unprecedented assault on the education system, as well as restrictions on the entry of some aid materials, including school books and pencils, meaning teachers had to make do with limited resources, while children tried to study at night in tents without lights, Elder said. During the conflict some children missed out on education altogether, facing basic challenges like finding water, as well as widespread malnutrition, amid a major humanitarian crisis.
“It’s been a long two years for children and for organizations like UNICEF to try and do that education without those materials. It looks like we’re finally seeing a real change,” Elder stated. UNICEF is scaling up its education to support half of children of school age — around 336,000 — with learning support. Teaching will mainly happen in tents, Elder said, due to widespread devastation of school buildings in the enclave during the war which was triggered by Hamas’ assault on Israel on October 2023.
At least 97 percent of schools sustained some level of damage, according to the most recent satellite assessment by the UN in July.
Israel has previously accused Hamas and other militant groups of systematically embedding in civilian areas and structures, including schools, and using civilians as human shields. The bulk of the learning spaces supported by UNICEF will be in central and southern areas of the enclave, as it remains difficult to operate in the north, parts of which were badly destroyed in the final months of the conflict, Elder said.
The Hamas-led attack in October 2023 killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s assault has killed 71,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s health authorities say. More than 20,000 children were reported killed, including 110 since the October 10 ceasefire last year, UNICEF said, citing official data.
