Ukraine arrested Turkish blogger for Ankara: police

Kiev's security services picked up a Turkish blogger accused of having links to the movement Ankara blames for a 2016 failed coup at the weekend, Ukrainian police said today.

The state-run Anadolu news agency had reported Sunday that Yusuf Inan was expelled from Ukraine as part of an operation by Turkey's National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) against a "terrorist group".

Local police spokeswoman Olena Berezhna told AFP that Inan was arrested in the southern city of Mykolaiv "by the Ukrainian security service (SBU), who took him" elsewhere.

It was the latest covert overseas swoop against a suspected member of the group of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the coup bid aimed at toppling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Inan, who fled Turkey after the failed coup in 2016, was accused of "trying to discredit some political figures and state officials in Turkey by carrying out a perception operation on social media", Anadolu said.

He is also wanted in western Izmir province for "being a member of an armed organisation", it said.

Inan is married to a Ukrainian woman and had a residence permit, Berezhna noted.

Authorities in Kiev have not yet confirmed the expulsion, and both the SBU and the Ukrainian prosecutor refused to respond to AFP's requests for comment.

Ukrainian authorities have also declined to comment on what happened to Salih Zeki Yigit, who was also detained in Ukraine and flown to Turkey last week.

It was far from the first time that MIT has conducted operations abroad aimed at bringing suspected Gulenists back to Turkey.

One alleged Gulen group member was flown from Azerbaijan by MIT last week.

In April, it flew three suspected members back to Turkey from the West African state of Gabon in a covert operation.

And in March, six Turkish nationals alleged to be Gulenists were extradited from Kosovo in a hugely contentious operation carried out by the Pristina interior ministry and MIT.

The operation sparked a crisis in Kosovo, with both the prime minister and president protesting that they were not informed.

Erdogan has vowed to hunt down Gulenists inside and outside Turkey, saying in April: "We will never allow those vile people to walk freely." A Turkish official said in April that 80 Gulenists had so far been returned to Turkey in such operations.

But Gulen, who has lived in the United States since 1999, denies any link to the failed coup bid.