The US-based Muslim cleric blamed by Turkey for orchestrating a failed coup this month is a pawn backed by a “mastermind”, President Tayyip Erdogan said, hinting that greater powers were behind the attempted putsch.
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Tens of thousands of people have been detained or dismissed or suspended from roles in the military, judiciary, civil service and education.
Omer Celik, Turkey’s European Union affairs minister, criticised Germany after it banned Mr Erdogan from making a televised address to a rally of pro-government Turks in Cologne. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has denied the charges and condemned the coup. More than 18,000 people were detained, of whom 10,137 were arrested.
Since the coup, Erdogan has launched a massive purge of Turkish institutions, especially the military, with more than 3,000 armed forces personnel dismissed.
Turkey says it has captured all but one of the soldiers who are accused of trying to seize the president during the failed coup. The rally came amid tensions among Turks following the coup attempt and concern in Germany over the scale of the Turkish government’s subsequent crackdown on those it says are linked to a USA -based cleric it blames for the coup attempt.
It also shuts down all military schools, academies and non-commissioned officer training institutes and establishes a new national defense university to train officers.
Erdogan has also strongly criticized U.S. military officials for comments he said implied that the detention of Turkish military officers as part of the coup investigation could affect the country’s fight against the Islamic State group.
The demonstration has become the focus of increasingly strained ties between Germany and Turkey.
In an interview on Saturday, Mr Erdogan said he also wanted to subject the MIT intelligence agency and the chief of general staff’s headquarters under presidential authority.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that there is “no place in Germany” for any side to “bring domestic political tensions from Turkey to us in Germany and intimidate people with other political convictions”.
Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus, speaking after a cabinet meeting and ahead of the planned meeting at the Foreign Ministry, said Germany had acted with “double standards” by banning the Erdogan address, the Anadolu news agency reported.
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Chief-of-staff Hulusi Akar’s aide-de-camp Levent Turkkan and Defence Minister Fikri Isik’s executive assistant Tevfik Gok were also discharged.
