ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused followers of a U.S. -based Islamic cleric he blames for last month´s coup attempt of being complicit in attacks by Kurdish militants in Turkey´s southeast which killed 10 people.
His linking of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants to those suspected of being behind the July 15 coup attempt came as Turkish authorities arrest or dismiss tens of thousands in a post-coup purge that some Western allies worry that Erdogan is using to target broader dissent.
Erdogan has blamed a network led by Fethullah Gulen, a cleric in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, for the
failed rebellion launched by rogue soldiers.
His remarks were prompted by bomb attacks on Wednesday and Thursday that left 10 dead, mostly police and soldiers, and wounded 300 in southeastern Turkey in an escalation of violence that officials blamed on Kurdish PKK militants.
"You don´t have to be fortune teller to see that the FETO is behind the latest PKK attacks in terms of sharing information
and intelligence," Erdogan said.
FETO is the term Ankara uses for Gulen´s network. In the largest blast, a car bomb tore through a police station in the city of Elazig early on Thursday as officers arrived for work.
Three officers were killed and 217 people were wounded, 85 of them police officers, officials said. A plume of black smoke rose above the city after the blast which uprooted trees and gouged a large crater outside the police complex.