Months after Turkey’s attempted coup, the purge is continuing. <br /><br /> On Monday, the opposition daily Cumhuriyet newspaper was targeted – the editor and senior staff detained, on accusations their coverage had helped precipitate what happened. <br /><br /> Now the interior ministry has revealed more than 1,200 gendarmerie staff have been suspended.<br /><br /> Ankara accuses US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating July’s attempted coup – and has dismissed more than 110,000 civil servants, academics, judges, police and others over suspected links to him. <br /><br /> Officials say the action is justified by the threat to democracy posed by Gulen’s followers.<br /><br /> According to a report by a member of the CHP opposition party, more than 50-thousand people were targeted in the month up to 17 September. <br /><br /> Over 28-thousand education staff have been removed during that period, it says. <br /><br /> More than 4,500 army members have gone, according to the figures. <br /><br /> While more than 4,200 university staff have been suspended and over 2,300 sacked. <br /><br /> The media has also taken a big hit in the purge. More than 2,300 journalists are said to have lost their jobs in the state of emergency, and 200 arrested.<br /><br /> While scores of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations have been closed. <br /><br /> The scale of the crackdown has alarmed Turkey’s Western allies and foreign investors. <br /><br /> Human rights groups and opposition parties say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the attempted coup as a pretext to muzzle all dissent in the EU-candidate nation. <br /><br /> More than 240 people were killed in July, when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets.<br />
