Turkey sacks 15,200 ministry of education staff as purge expanded

Turkey sacked 15,200 staff at the ministry of education on Tuesday in the latest purge of anyone thought to be affiliated with the coup attempt.

The staff were sacked due to alleged ties to the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turkish government blamed for the coup. Gulen denied any involvement. Turkey had demanded that Gulen, who was living in the US state of Pennsylvania, be extradited.

The BBC reported that the Turkey’s high education board ordered the resignation of over 1,500 university deans.

On Tuesday, Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that the EPDK, the country's energy market regulator, also suspended 25 officials for alleged links to the coup.

Since Friday’s attempted coup, military, judiciary, police and other officials had been detained, suspended or sacked.

So far 7,543 people including 6,038 soldiers were detained, 50 civil servants had been dismissed, while 8,000 police officers had been sacked.

During the previous weekend's failed coup 232 people were killed, of which 208 were civilians.

On the evening of 15 July the military attempted to seize power from president Recep Tayyip Erdogan by taking over the state media. The coup was wholly unsuccessful with Erdogan not only holding on to power but, according to some observers, also provided with an opportunity to in fact tighten his grip on power.

As of 16:38 BST the US dollar was 1.69% higher versus the Turkish lira at 3.0275, while the Borsa Istanbul 100 equity index had closed 1.01% to 76,177.81 after a large slide in the last hour of trading.