A lawyer who represented families of victims of earthquakes that struck southeastern Turkey on February 6, 2023, in negligence cases and publicly opposed clemency for suspects has been put in a one-person cell, following an investigation triggered by an anonymous denunciation, the Evrensel daily reported.
Naim Eminoğlu was arrested on December 11, days after publicly opposing clemency provisions in the government’s 11th Judicial Reform Package that could have reduced sentences for suspects in earthquake-related negligence cases and criticizing the package as undermining accountability.
According to court documents and local media reports, the investigation into Eminoğlu was launched after an anonymous email was sent to the Turkish National Police on October 14. The unsigned message alleged that Eminoğlu studied law at Melikşah University, which was shut down in 2016 due to its affiliation with the faith-based Gülen movement and that he had lived in movement-affiliated student housing.
The allegations were acted upon nearly two months later, shortly after Eminoğlu’s public criticism of the judicial reform package.
Following his arrest Eminoğlu was transferred to a one-person cell at Marmara Prison after objecting to being held in the same ward as prisoners detained in Gülen-related cases.
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.
Ezgi Önalan, chair of the İstanbul branch of the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD), said Eminoğlu chose to study at a private university on a scholarship because his family could not afford to support him at a state university in a major city.
“Receiving an education at a university established with the approval and signatures of 24 different state institutions cannot be a crime,” Önalan said. “We witnessed similar practices after July 15, when many poor students from working-class families were detained to create scapegoats or to generate an image of terror.”
During questioning, investigators told Eminoğlu they had identified phone contact with 104 individuals allegedly linked to the Gülen movement as well as communication with 34 phone lines allegedly associated with users of the encrypted ByLock messaging app.
His lawyer said the call records date back to the 2012–2016 period, when Eminoğlu was a university student and argued that communication traffic data alone cannot constitute evidence of membership in a terrorist organization.
Since the 2016 coup attempt Turkish authorities have convicted Gülen supporters of terrorism-related charges based on activities that courts consider indicative of affiliation with the movement, including working at a private school affiliated with the movement, depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya, witness testimony and the use of 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 movement supporters.
Eminoğlu has represented victims and families in several high-profile cases, including a 2025 ski resort fire case, negligence cases related to the February 6, 2023, earthquakes and prisoners on hunger strike protesting Turkey’s high-security “pit-type” prisons. He has also served as a lawyer for the families of workers killed in a 2024 nightclub fire in Istanbul’s Gayrettepe district as well as for miners who died in workplace disasters in Soma in 2014 and Amasra in 2022.
