Turkish authorities have arrested 182 of 298 people detained in nationwide operations over the past two weeks over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, according to official statements.
In a statement issued on Tuesday the Interior Ministry said 298 people were detained during operations carried out across 38 provinces. Of those, 182 were arrested and 75 were released under judicial supervision, while legal procedures are ongoing for the remaining detainees.
The detainees were accused of engaging in activities linked to the movement, including aiding families of people jailed over alleged Gülen ties, sharing social media posts authorities said were aligned with the movement, contacting alleged members via payphones and using encrypted messaging app ByLock, an application once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim served as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
The arrests are the latest in a yearslong campaign by the government against the Gülen movement, which authorities designate as a terrorist organization.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s campaign against the movement began after corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as members of his family and inner circle, which he dismissed as a conspiracy, formally designating it as a terrorist organization in May 2016.
Following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, then-prime minister Erdoğan immediately accused the Gülen movement, inspired by the late US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, of orchestrating the plot and significantly expanded an already underway crackdown on the movement’s supporters. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
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 for 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.
