Turkish police detained 93 former and currently employed tax inspectors in raids across 11 provinces on Friday, part of an İstanbul-based investigation over links to the faith-based Gülen movement that prosecutors said relies in part on alleged contacts traced through public payphone records, Turkish Minute reported.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and inner circle.
Erdoğan dismissed the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government. After targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement for two years, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in July 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding.
The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said warrants were issued for 94 tax inspectors currently working or who once worked in the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, including people dismissed as part of a crackdown following the 2016 coup attempt. Prosecutors said one person being sought was abroad.
Prosecutors claim the detainees used kiosk and payphone lines as a way to set up contact that avoids direct, traceable communication. The statement also said the file includes witness testimony alleging Gülen movement membership.
The so-called “payphone investigations” are based on call records. The prosecutors allege that a member of the Gülen movement used a single payphone to consecutively call all his contacts. Based on that assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call records, it is assumed that other numbers called right before or after the primary call also belong to people with Gülen links. The authorities do not possess the content of the calls in question. The supposition of guilt is solely based on the order of the calls made from the phone.
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.
