Turkish police seek 70 military officers over Gulen links

ISTANBUL – Turkish police launched an operation on Tuesday to arrest 70 soldiers accused of links to the US-based Islamic preacher alleged to have orchestrated last year's attempted coup, the private Dogan news agency reported.

Operations targeting supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen are continuing on a daily basis some 15 months after the failed putsch. Gulen has denied involvement. In the last week alone, around 800 people were held over alleged ties to him.

Among those targeted in the police raids, focused in the central Turkish city of Konya but launched simultaneously across seven provinces, were two colonels, seven captains and 36 lieutenants, Dogan said.

Sixty-two of the suspects were in the air force, some of them pilots, it added. Police were conducting searches of their homes and places of work.