President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while announcing the state of emergency July 21, said the decision was taken to eradicate the presence of the Fethullah Gulen movement in the state structure and elsewhere in the country. But since then, Kurds, Alevis, socialists and now the Protestants who had nothing to do with Gulenists are increasingly being targeted.
Developments in recent weeks have been seriously disturbing to Turkey’s Protestant community, believed to be around 7,000 people.