Turkey’s government has ordered the closure of dozens of media outlets – including news agencies, television channels, radio stations and newspapers – as part of its widespread crackdown in the wake of a failed coup attempt on July 15.
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Also Wednesday, the government-run Anadolu Agency reported that almost 1,700 military officers have been formally discharged in the wake of the coup efforts.
Police were set to detain the journalists as part of an investigation into US -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the July 15-16 coup attempt in which at least 246 people were killed, CNN Turk said.
Gulen denies any involvement in the coup attempt. Of those discharged, 149 were either generals or admirals.
On Monday, the Turkish government issued detention warrants for over 40 journalists suspected of having links to the failed military coup, NTV reported.
Turkey has also ordered another 47 journalists detained.
However, the list includes journalists, such as Sahin Alpay, known for their leftist activism who do not share the religious world view of the Gulenist movement. “This animation is a message from Turkey”, he went on to say. “[The armed forces] will pay a heavy price for this”, he said after the failed coup, Reuters reported.
A Turkish military officer, right, in Athens on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of civil servants, from teachers to judges to financial regulators, have also been suspended from their jobs.
Amnesty International sounded the alarm on Sunday, saying it gathered “credible evidence” that people arrested in relation to the failed coup attempt have been “subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country”.
Turkish officials say this shows the extent to which the armed forces were infiltrated at the hightest level by supporters of Gulen. In 2013, his followers in the police and judiciary opened a corruption probe into business associates of Erdogan, then prime minister, who denounced the investigation as a foreign plot.
Last week, Turkey declared a three-month state of emergency, allowing the president and the government to bypass parliament when drafting new laws and to restrict or suspend rights and freedoms.
According to Yeni Safak, Campbell “also managed more than $2 billion in transactions via UBA Bank in Nigeria by using Central Intelligence Agency links to distribute among the pro-coup military personnel in Turkey”.
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Standard & Poor’s recently revised the country’s sovereign debt outlook to negative from stable and Moody’s has said it will review the rating for a possible downgrade.
