Can Dündar , Editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily '' Cumhuriyet '' , described the purges as part of a historical pattern of political power in Turkey shifting back and forth between the secular military versus religious institutions , with democrats in the middle having little power to prevent the repeated oscillations , but worse than previous cycles . He described the 2016 purges as " the biggest witch-hunt in Turkey 's history " . Historians and analysts including Henri J. Barkey , Director of the Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , compared the 2016 Turkish purges to Mao Zedong 's Cultural Revolution that started in 1966 and the Iranian Cultural Revolution in which Iranian academia was purged during 1980 – 1987 . The government of Turkey has been analysed to blame Western forces and raise anti-Americanism in order to distract the public from real intranational tensions , as well as to take an upper ground for negotiations . According to the '' New York Times '' , " Searching for historical parallels , analysts have made comparisons with Joseph McCarthy ’s anti-Communist witch hunt in 1950s America , the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s and ’70s . " Other comparisons have been made with Hitler 's use of the Reichstag fire to consolidate his power , and with Atatürk 's use of the 1926 assassination plot on his life to purge Turkey of his political opponents and rivals
Stalinist purges
Great Purge
2016–present purges in Turkey