Turkey has arrested 11 soldiers suspected of involvement in an attack on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hotel during the night of the failed coup, the country’s deputy prime minister has said.
Mr Erdogan was staying in the western seaside resort of Marmaris on 15 July but went to Istanbul just before the hotel came under attack from rebel soldiers determined to oust him from power.
"Eleven of them were captured in Ula," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told a press conference after a cabinet meeting, referring to a town near Marmaris.
He said one soldier was still at large.
Mr Erdogan earlier said his swift escape had saved him from being killed or taken hostage.
An interior ministry official, who declined to be named, described the arrested men as members of a "death squad" and said the overnight operation to catch them followed a tip-off from local villagers.
The soldiers had been hiding in the wild landscape above Marmaris since the military action, and the villagers spotted them while they were out boar-hunting.
"There was an exchange of fire during the operation," the official added. "Drones and helicopters were used to pinpoint the location."
Since the coup, Mr Erdogan has launched a massive purge of Turkish institutions, especially the military, with more than 3,000 armed forces personnel dismissed.
Meanwhile, a German foreign ministry spokesman has said the county is going through a bumpy patch in its relations with Turkey but past experience has shown this can be overcom.
"We have had phases in the past that were bumpy and other phases when things went extraordinarily well. Now we have a bit of a bumpy phase," Martin Schaefer told a regular government news conference.
"But I think the relations between Germany and Turkey are so close and so deep ... that I am quite confident we will manage again to overcome this not so easy phase of bilateral relations with Turkey," he added.
The minister's comments follow the decision by Turkey to summon the charge d'affaires at the German Embassy after the German authorities prevented Mr Erdogan from addressing by video link a pro-democracy rally in Cologne.
