Turkish police on Monday detained four people in İstanbul over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run TRT Haber reported.
The individuals were being sought on detention warrants due to allegations of membership in a terrorist organization based on claims that include depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya, attending organizational meetings and using ByLock, an encrypted messaging application once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim served as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The İstanbul Police Department said the detentions were carried out in an operation conducted by the counterterrorism and intelligence units of the department in coordination with the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
Legal proceedings against the detainees are ongoing.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
