Turkish troops hunt remaining coup plotters as crackdown widens
Turkish special forces backed by helicopters, drones and the navy hunted a remaining group of commandos thought to have tried to capture or kill President Tayyip Erdogan during a failed coup, as a crackdown on suspected plotters widened on July 26.
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More than 1,000 members of the security forces were involved in the manhunt for the 11 rogue soldiers in the hills around the Mediterranean coastal resort of Marmaris, where Erdogan was holidaying on the night of the coup attempt, officials said.
Erdogan and the government accuse US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the attempted power grab and have launched a crackdown on his suspected followers.
More than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges and civil servants have been arrested, suspended or put under investigation.
The religious affairs directorate removed another 620 staff including preachers and instructors in the Koran on July 26, bringing to more than 1,100 the number of people it has purged since the July 15 coup attempt.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said two Turkish ambassadors, currently in Ankara, had also been removed. Former Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu was detained and his house searched.
"There is no institution which this structure has not infiltrated," Erdogan's son-in-law, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, said in a televised interview, referring to Gulen's network of followers.
