An education ministry district director in İstanbul is among 81 people detained in raids across 16 provinces in the latest wave of a years-long crackdown on alleged members of the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Minute reported.
The director, Metin Çangır, ran İstanbul’s Tuzla district education office. The education ministry deleted his listing from its website after his detention and dismissal became public knowledge while an investigation continued.
On Monday Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X that 81 people were detained in 16 provinces in coordinated raids that included İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Diyarbakir and Balikesir. He said some of those in custody were public officials and that the suspects were identified based on digital material obtained from a confidential informant.
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.
Prosecutors allege that some of the suspects were part of what the government describes as a clandestine network inside Turkey’s police force. Authorities say the group organized regular meetings between alleged movement members and serving officers.
Investigators also claim that the suspects used ByLock, an encrypted messaging application, and were listed in the records of companies that authorities say were linked to the movement.
ByLock, once widely available online, has been considered a secret tool of communication among supporters of the movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
The latest detentions come despite a landmark ruling from the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in September 2023 that found the use of ByLock did not constitute a criminal offense. The Grand Chamber ruled in the case of former teacher Yüksel Yalçınkaya that the use of the ByLock application was not an offense in itself and did not constitute sufficient evidence for an arrest.
