Turkish prosecutors on Tuesday ordered the detention of 12 people, including five civil servants, over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, as part of the government’s continuing crackdown on the group.
According to the state-run TRT Haber, the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office issued the warrants, targeting five current and seven former civil servants, while police launched operations in four provinces to take them into custody.
The prosecutors accused them of engaging in activities linked to the Gülen movement, including contacting members via pay phones, 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.
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.
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.
