Perhaps a good education doesn't always pay off after all.

Three months after the July 15 failed coup, dismissals of military personnel and a flood of investigations about the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) continue. And on Oct. 12, in the fifth wave of purges, 201 ranking officers from the Turkish air force and 32 from the navy were discharged.

A striking commonality in the latest wave of dismissals quickly attracted attention. In this group of mostly captains, majors and lieutenant colonels, the majority were highly qualified TSK officers assigned to critical transformation projects. Most had completed master’s degrees or doctoral studies in prestigious US military institutes such as the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and top colleges such as Yale, Princeton and Stanford.

The Naval Postgraduate School, which I attended from 2008-11 for a master's degree in security studies, has been a target of Turkish media for a long time. Citing confessions of a Gulenist officer, Turkish media have reported that coup staff officers attended the same school, claiming the CIA and Pentagon established contacts with the coup plotters through the school. Although I never heard of a lecture or a workshop on "How to Stage a Coup" during the 18 months I attended the Naval Postgraduate School, many officers have told me that there has been a perceptible increase in the presence and influence of Gulenist-linked officers who went there.