9,000 more police off job in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey suspended 9,000 police officers, including more than a dozen in a protection force for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family, extending a crackdown on suspected followers of a U.S.-based cleric who the government blames for orchestrating last year’s coup attempt.

The officers were suspended over ties to the “terrorist network of Fethullah Gulen and for posing a threat to national security,” according to a police statement issued late Wednesday. Some earlier had been assigned to oversee legal investigations into suspected Gulenists, it said. The move came several hours after prosecutors ordered the detention of more than 3,000 people, mostly civilians, on accusations of overseeing a secret structure within the police force.

Turkey has suspended or fired nearly 150,000 people, including thousands of police officers, for links to Gulen, who has denied the charges against him.