Reuters - Turkish authorities
issued detention warrants on Friday for 166 people including police chiefs,
state media reported, launching a fresh operation linked to
July's attempted
coup which Ankara blames on followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
The investigation
was initially focused on Istanbul police headquarters staff but spread across
35 provinces, targeting people who used a little-known smartphone messaging app
known as ByLock, state-run Anadolu Agency said.
In the post-coup
crackdown, some 32,000 people have been jailed pending trial and around 100,000
members of the security and civil services, university professors and others
have been fired or suspended from work.
Turkey's Western
allies in the European Union and NATO have voiced concerns that innocent people
may be swept up in the investigations, which critics have described as a purge.
Turkey enforced
emergency rule and began dismissing, suspending and arresting state officials
after the coup attempt in which rogue troops commandeered warplanes to bomb
parliament and used tanks to kill 240 people, many of whom were civilians.
Ankara says
followers of Gulen staged the coup to overthrow President Tayyip Erdogan and
seize control of the country. Gulen, a one-time ally of Erdogan, denies any
involvement.
A senior Turkish
official said in August the country's intelligence agency had identified at
least 56,000 operatives of Gulen's network after it cracked the ByLock app,
which the group began using in 2014. [nL8N1AQ1DR] [nL8N1AK33M]
Reuters
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