The companies were accused of offering financial support to the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen accused of organising the failed coup, Xinhua news agency reported.
Advertisement
Turkey has imposed a three-month state of emergency which it says is needed to hunt down the coup plotters, and Erdogan has vowed to eradicate businesses, charities and schools linked to Gulen, calling them “nests of terror”.
Gulen, a reclusive cleric who has lived in self-exile in the United States since 1999, vehemently denies he was behind the coup attempt. US Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Ankara next week, the White House said, in the highest ranking visit to Turkey by a Western official since the coup.
In Van province, two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded on Wednesday when a auto bomb exploded near a police station, the local governor’s office said.
He also said 4,262 companies and institutions with links to Gulen had been shut.
Early Thursday, another vehicle bombing hit police headquarters in the eastern Turkish city of Elazig. At least 14 of them were in serious condition.
Turkish officials and state-run media say two vehicle bombings targeting police stations in eastern Turkey have killed at least six people and wounded over 120. Dozens of other people, including some 20 police officers, were wounded.
Turkey witnessed on Wednesday and Thursday a series of bombings that targeted security sites, east of the country, killing nine security men and a civilian man, and injuring 226 others.
In the largest blast, a auto bomb tore through a police station in the city of Elazig early on Thursday as officers arrived for work.
Turkey’s southeast has been scorched by violence since the collapse of a 2-1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK in July last year. Since then, more than 600 Turkish security personnel and thousands of PKK militants have been killed, according to state-run Anadolu Agency. News stories displayed here appear in our category for General and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
Advertisement
They insist it is an informal grouping promoting moderate islam and development, but their critics see them as a shadowy organisation with an unaccountable influence in Turkey.
