Ankara seeks arrest of academics in post-coup crackdown

Turkish prosecutors have ordered the arrest of 87 people linked to Istanbul University as the state keeps up its purge of what it calls the academic structure linked to US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Police have carried our far-and-wide operations in 12 provinces, targeting suspects including many professors from the university, CNN Turk reported Friday.

The government has been leading a relentless witch-hunt against the people it accuses of adherence to Gulen, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ally-turned-archenemy. It accuses Gulen of masterminding a failed July coup, a charge the Pennsilvania-based clergyman denies.

The crackdown has seen some 36,000 people being jailed pending trial and more than 100,000 sacked or suspended across the civil service, army, judiciary and other institutions.

The part of the purge, which tries to weed out Gulen-linked academics, saw the police detaining dozens of academics from Islanbul’s Yildiz University.

The campaign has raised vociferous criticism among those accusing the government of using the failed putsch as a pretext to suppress dissent. Among other things, it has cost the country the prospect of its long-sought accession to the European Union.

Ankara has, meanwhile, been trying to reintroduce death penalty, in what has been condemned as the high point of the suppression.

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