Turkish police on Tuesday detained 14 minors, all reportedly aged 15, during raids in Istanbul for alleged links to the Gülen movement, according to the Turkish media.
The Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office issued detention warrants for the youngsters on allegations of “disseminating terrorist propaganda.”
Following raids conducted in homes around Beylikdüzü, a district on the European side of Istanbul, the minors were taken to the juvenile division of the police department.
The teens are accused of staying in student apartments affiliated with the movement and exchanging text messages as part of an allegedly Gülen-linked student network.
The detainees were reportedly released in the evening.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
A family member of one of the youngsters said, “They detained my sister, too. We don’t know why she was taken. They didn’t provide any information due to the confidentiality of the case file.”
The parents of the detainees were reportedly dismissed from their jobs by executive decrees after the failed coup attempt in July 2016, as part of a widespread post-coup purge targeting public sector workers with suspected Gülen links.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 24,706 members of the armed forces, were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
