Turkish police have detained 12 former police officers over their alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the Kronos news website reported on Tuesday.
The operation involved simultaneous raids at 13 locations across İzmir’s Menemen, Bergama, and Torbalı districts, as well as in Mersin. Officials said an additional arrest warrant has been issued for one more suspect.
The detainees are all former police officers who were dismissed from their posts by government decrees in the aftermath of a 2016 failed coup.
Further details about the investigation were not immediately available.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim Cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of 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 targeting its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the failed coup, 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. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 29,444 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.
Since the coup attempt, a total of 705,172 people have been investigated on terrorism or coup-related charges due to their alleged links to the movement. There are currently 13,251 people in prison who are in pretrial detention or convicted of terrorism in Gülen-linked trials.
