Turkey Widens Crackdown with Another 1,400 Fired from Army

Further alienating Turkey's Western allies, President Tayyip Erdogan Sunday dismissed an additional 1,389 military personnel and stacked a cabinet-level defense panel with top government ministers in a crackdown that has now eclipsed more than 60,000 civil servants, teachers and soldiers who have been detained since a failed coup that began the evening of July 15.

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The moves were announced in Turkey's official gazette and is the latest in a series of measures aimed at consolidating Erdogan's grip on power following the coup attempt earlier this month that in which a rogue faction within the military unsuccessfully tried to depose Erdogan. The decree also announced that government officials planned to scrap Turkey's military schools and academies while establishing a new national military university within the defense ministry.

The state-run news agency Anadolu said the soldiers were dismissed because of alleged links to the movement led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan accuses of masterminding the coup.

From his home in Pennsylvania, Gulen has denied the allegations and accused Erdogan himself of orchestrating the coup as a ruse to tighten his increasingly authoritarian grip on power.

The latest expulsions follows the dishonorable discharges of 149 admirals and generals — almost half the military's entire contingent — along with 1,099 officers and 436 junior officers. Erdogan told the A-Haber television channel late Saturday that he would seek parliamentary approval for his plan to amend Turkey's constitution to bring the Turkish spy agency and military chief of staff directly under his control.

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More than 50,000 people have lost their jobs nationwide and more than 18,000 have been detained since the coup, in which rebel soldiers battled Erdogan loyalists in the streets in a night of intense fighting that left nearly 300 dead and thousands injured.

Erdogan's two-fisted response to the coup has put many of his Western allies on edge. Turkey's EU Affairs minister lashed out at Germany Sunday after its constitutional court upheld a ban on Erdogan making a televised address to a rally of pro-government Turks in Cologne. Erdogan, in turn, has responded by strengthening ties with Russia – as well as his erstwhile rival, President Vladmir Putin.

Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture on the night of the coup, told Reuters in a July 21st interview that Turkey´s military, NATO's second-biggest, needed "fresh blood."