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Bloomberg
Turkish Airlines fired its chief financial officer Monday amid a wider purge of staff said by the carrier to have links to the exiled cleric alleged to have been behind this month’s botched coup attempt in Turkey.
CFO Coskun Kilic will be replaced by Murat Seker, head of investor relations and financial institutions at state-owned TC Ziraat Bankasi AS, Turkey’s largest lender, Turk Hava Yollari AO, as the airline is formally known, said in a filing.
While the carrier, which is 49 percent state owned, didn’t explain Kilic’s ousting, the move was announced at the same time as the dismissal of 211 staff said to have links to the Fethullah Gulen movement, and hence “attitudes and behavior†conflicting with the best interests of the company and country.
More than 60,000 people have been arrested, suspended from office or sacked across Turkey since plotters led by elements of the armed forces tried unsuccessfully to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 15.
The purge has focused on institutions including the military and police, as well as state-owned businesses including Turk Telekomunikasyon AS, the national landline phone company.
The government has a controlling vote on the board of Turkish Airlines, which employs more than 16,000 people.