Turkish authorities have detained 141 people in two operations and arrested 88 over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the Interior Ministry said in separate statements on Friday and Monday.
The ministry on Monday said 61 people were detained during simultaneous raids carried out across 32 provinces. Of those, 41 were arrested and four 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 Gülen movement, making donations to affiliated charities, preparing to leave the country and sharing social media posts authorities said were aligned with the movement.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted 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. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
In a separate investigation, police detained 77 people in 27 provinces, the ministry said on Friday. Forty-seven detainees were later arrested and 23 were released under judicial supervision, while legal procedures are ongoing for the remaining detainees. The detainees were accused of 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 was used as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
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.
