Turkish secret agents in 18 countries have seized 80 Turks suspected of having links to a group accused of plotting a coup in 2016 and returned them to Turkey, a senior government official said Thursday.

Bekir Bozdag, the deputy prime minister, hinted at audacious actions by Turkish intelligence operatives abroad under the increasingly authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The scope of the arrests conjured up analogies to the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert seizures and imprisonments of suspects after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Speaking in a Turkish television interview, Mr. Bozdag did not specify how precisely such arrests had been carried out. Nor did he disclose where the suspects had been detained, except for the arrests that had been made public in Bulgaria, Malaysia and Kosovo. There have been unconfirmed reports in the Turkish press of arrests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.