Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said 23,364 people had been dismissed from the Turkish Armed Forces since Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt as part of the government’s campaign against alleged Gülen movement links inside the military.
Akar made the statement at the 5th International July 15 Symposium in İstanbul, held ahead of the fifth anniversary of the failed coup.
Akar was chief of General Staff on the night of July 15 and later became defense minister.
He said the military would continue removing personnel as new information and documents emerged.
“We will continue our resolute struggle in its entirety, incorporating new information, documents and data as they come to light, and let no one doubt that we will go as far as it takes,” Akar said.
“We never allowed and never will allow any traitor to wear the proud uniform of the Turkish Armed Forces,” he said. “Let everyone be certain of this.”
The figure offered one of the clearest official counts of the scale of the purge inside the Turkish military five years after the coup attempt.
Ankara designates the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, as a terrorist organization and blames it for Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt. The movement denies involvement in the coup or any terrorist activity.
The dismissals were part of a broader post-coup purge that reshaped the Turkish military, judiciary, police, education system and civil service.
Akar presented the removals as a continuing security campaign, saying the armed forces had grown stronger after the purge.
Rights advocates and critics of the post-coup trials have argued that many dismissals and prosecutions relied on broad allegations of affiliation rather than individualized evidence.
The symposium was organized around the official commemoration of July 15, which the government marks each year as Democracy and National Unity Day.
