Turkish police on Wednesday detained a former military officer in Kocaeli province who had been sought by the authorities following his conviction on charges of alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The Kocaeli Police Department said the former officer, a first lieutenant identified only by the initials D.Ç., was detained in İzmit during a police operation. He had been dismissed from the military by an emergency decree in the aftermath of a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, and later sentenced to six years, three months in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization over his alleged links to the Gülen movement.
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 the 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.
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.
