Turkey: Former soldier gets jail term over FETO link

By Serdar Acil, Mustafa Yildirim, Omer Sut and Cemil Murat Budak

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkish judges on Tuesday sentenced a former military officer to more than six years for his ties to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup, according to judicial authorities.

Emre Aslan, a former captain in the Turkish Armed Forces, was found guilty of being a FETO member and he was handed 6 years and 3 months of prison sentence.

Separately, Turkish security forces in the Aegean province of Izmir arrested a former police chief on suspicions of being a FETO member.

In a separate operation in Izmir, security forces rounded up 13 out of the 17 suspects for their alleged links to FETO, security sources said.

Security forces in the capital Ankara also held 5 out of the 9 suspects sought for being FETO members, security sources said.

The suspects were found to have communicated with FETO’s “covert imams” -- senior FETO operatives -- via pay phones.

FETO and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.

Turkey accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

*Writing by Erdogan Cagatay Zontur