Turkey orders 238 detained in military probe over Gulen links

Critics claim Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the failed coup, which the leader blamed on US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, as a pretext to stifle dissent. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 19 January 2021
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Turkey orders 238 detained in military probe over Gulen links

  • Operation, covering 60 provinces, part of a four-year-old crackdown against the network of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen

ISTANBUL: Turkey has ordered the arrest of 238 people in an operation targeting suspects in the military allegedly linked to a Muslim preacher who Ankara says was behind a 2016 failed coup, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.
The operation, covering 60 provinces, was part of a four-year-old crackdown against the network of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. He denies involvement in the July 2016 putsch attempt, in which more than 250 people were killed.
Anadolu said 160 people had been detained in the latest police raids, ordered by prosecutors in Izmir. It said suspects were also targeted in northern Cyprus, where the Turkish military is deployed.
Among the suspects were 218 serving military personnel, including six colonels, three lieutenant colonels and nine majors, Anadolu said.
Since the coup attempt, about 80,000 people have been held pending trial and some 150,000 civil servants, military personnel and others have been sacked or suspended. More than 20,000 people had been expelled from the Turkish military.


Israel army kills West Bank attacker who tried to run over troops

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Israel army kills West Bank attacker who tried to run over troops

  • The Palestinian civil affairs authority named the man as 20-year-old Qais Sami Jaser Allan, adding that he “was shot by the occupation forces between the towns of Einabus and Awarta”

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said its troops shot dead a man who tried to run over a group of soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.
The incident occurred in Einabus in the northern West Bank, the military said.
“A short while ago, a report was received regarding a terrorist who attempted to run over IDF (Israeli army) soldiers operating in the area of Einabus,” the military said.
“In response, the soldiers fired at the terrorist and eliminated him.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it rescued three people after the Israeli army opened fire near Einabus on a vehicle with Palestinian license plates.
“Two of the wounded were shot, and one of them is in critical condition. The third was injured as a result of being beaten,” the Red Crescent said.
The Palestinian civil affairs authority named the man as 20-year-old Qais Sami Jaser Allan, adding that he “was shot by the occupation forces between the towns of Einabus and Awarta.”
The incident came just days after a Palestinian from the West Bank ran over an Israeli in his sixties with his vehicle and later stabbed an 18-year-old girl to death in northern Israel.
The perpetrator was killed during the attack.
Following that incident on Friday, the military conducted a two-day operation in the West Bank town of Qabatiya from where the attacker came, detaining several residents including his father and brothers.
Since the start of the war in Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, violence has also surged in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the territory, including many militants as well as dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have also been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period in the West Bank.