Turkey removes more than 10,000 security personnel, academics in purge

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have suspended about 8,000 security personnel and more than 2,000 academics, adding to a purge of people suspected of having links to perpetrators of a failed coup, the Official Gazette said on Friday. Since the coup attempt in mid-July, in which rogue soldiers tried to topple President Tayyip Erdogan's government, Turkey has removed 80,000 people from public duty and arrested many of them, accusing them of sympathizing with the plotters. Of the security personnel removed in the latest purge, 323 were members of the gendarmerie and the rest police, according to the Official Gazette, in which the government publishes new laws and orders. It said 2,346 more academics had been removed from universities. Hundreds of academics and others have already been swept from their posts, accused of links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Erdogan says masterminded the coup. About 3,300 judiciary officials have also been dismissed, leaving a depleted workforce to manage the legal process against a growing number of detainees. The Gazette said retired judges and prosecutors would be allowed to return to work if they applied to do so in the next two months. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Writing by Edmund Blair; editing by John Stonestreet)