Using Ministry of Justice data, Reuters calculated that at least 45 percent of Turkey’s roughly 21,000 judges and prosecutors now have three years of experience or less. Erdogan has spent years purging the system of officials deemed disloyal; the process accelerated after the July 2016 military coup attempt. Under the pretext of cleansing the apparatus from coup plotters, Erdogan and his government sacked more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors in the year that followed. Most were accused of ties to the shadowy cleric Fethullah Gulen, the alleged mastermind of the coup attempt. By now, Erdogan’s purge has reached the highest levels of the judicial system.
