Turkey arrests 158 military staff

Turkish police on Tuesday arrested 158 members of the military suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen, who was accused of masterminding a failed 2016 coup, the public prosecutor's office in Istanbul said.

Gulen, a cleric who died in 2024, was once a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the two became bitter enemies.

He relocated to the United States in 1999 and never returned. The government accuses Gulen's Hizmet movement of seeking to establish a "parallel state".

Around 50 other members of the military were arrested in late May. The prosecutor's office said that a search was still underway for another 18 members of the military.