Prosecutor issues detention warrant for 100 over alleged links to Gülen movement

Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 100 people across 31 provinces who include high-level administrators over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. The detention warrants were issued as part of a Konya-based investigation.

Meanwhile, a Turkish court ruled for the arrest of 9 engineers from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBİTAK) on Thursday. Early on Feb. 16, police teams carried out simultaneous operations in Kocaeli, İstanbul and Ankara province, and detained 24 engineers as part of an investigation launched by a Kocaeli prosecutor. Of those, 9 were sent to prison for having links to the Gulen movement.

Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the coup “a great gift of God” and pinned the blame on the Gülen movement, inspired by US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.

Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

Over 135,000 people, including thousands within the military, have been purged due to their real or alleged connection to the Gülen movement since the coup attempt, according to a statement by the labor minister on Jan. 10. As of Feb. 1, According to figures compiled by turkeypurge.com which has been monitoring human rights violations in Turkey’s after failed coup on July 15, 2016, over 92,500 people were detained, 45,882 people were jailed with pre-trial arrest due to their alleged links to the movement.

Feb. 23, 2017

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