ANKARA: Turkey has ordered the arrest of 128 military personnel over suspected links to the network accused by Ankara of orchestrating an attempted coup in 2016, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Tuesday.
Police were looking for just over half of the suspects in the western coastal province of Izmir and the rest across 30 other provinces, Anadolu said.
They were suspected of being supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkish authorities of masterminding the failed putsch three years ago. Gulen has denied any role.
More than 77,000 people have been jailed pending trial, while about 150,000 people from the civil service, military, and elsewhere have been sacked or suspended from their jobs under crackdowns since the attempted coup.
Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have criticized the scope of the crackdown, saying Erdogan has used the abortive coup as a pretext to quash dissent.
The government has said the security measures are necessary due to the gravity of the threat Turkey faces, and has vowed to eradicate Gulen’s network in the country.
Turkey orders arrest of 128 military personnel over suspected Gulen links
Turkey orders arrest of 128 military personnel over suspected Gulen links
- Arrested military personnel are suspected of being supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen
- Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have criticized the scope of the crackdown
Lebanon PM says IMF wants rescue plan changes as crisis deepens
- “We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said
- “They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive”
DAVOS, Switzerland: The International Monetary Fund has demanded amendments to a draft rescue law aimed at hauling Lebanon out of its worst financial crisis on record and giving depositors access to savings frozen for six years, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.
The “financial gap” law is part of a series of reform measures required by the IMF in order to access its funding and aims to allocate the losses from Lebanon’s 2019 crash between the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors.
Salam told Reuters the IMF wants clearer provisions in the hierarchy of claims, which is a core element of the draft legislation designed to determine how losses are allocated.
“We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said in an interview at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
“They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive,” Salam added.
In 2022, the government put losses from the financial crisis at about $70 billion, a figure that analysts and economists forecast is now likely to be higher.
Salam stressed that Lebanon is still pushing for a long-delayed IMF program, but warned the clock is ticking as the country has already been placed on a financial ‘grey list’ and risks falling onto the ‘blacklist’ if reforms stall further.
“We want an IMF program and we want to continue our discussions until we get there,” he said, adding: “International pressure is real ... The longer we delay, the more people’s money will evaporate.”
The draft law, which was passed by Salam’s government in December, is under parliamentary review. It aims to give depositors a guaranteed path to recovering their funds, restart bank lending, and end a financial crisis that has left nearly a million accounts frozen and confidence in the system shattered.
The roadmap would repay depositors up to $100,000 over four years, starting with smaller accounts, while launching forensic audits to determine losses and responsibility.
Lebanon’s Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, who is driving the reform push with Salam, told Reuters it was essential to salvage a hollowed-out banking system, and to stop the country from sliding deeper into its cash-only, paralyzed economy.
The aim, Jaber said, is to give depositors clarity after years of uncertainty and to end a system that has crippled Lebanon’s international standing.
He framed the law as part of a broader reckoning: the first time a Lebanese government has confronted a combined collapse of the banking sector, the central bank and the state treasury.
Financial reforms have been repeatedly derailed by political and private vested interests over the last six years and Jaber said the responsibility now lies with lawmakers.
Failure to act, he said, would leave Lebanon trapped in “a deep, dark tunnel” with no way back to a functioning system.
“Lebanon has become a cash economy, and the real question is whether we want to stay on the grey list, or sleepwalk into a blacklist,” Jaber added.
