Durmuş Zorlu, a 54-year-old former police officer imprisoned over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, died of a heart attack in İzmir’s Kırıklar Prison on Thursday, the TR724 news website reported.
Zorlu reportedly collapsed in the prison courtyard shortly before a football match after saying he did not want to play. He could not be revived, despite intervention by prison officers and inmates. According to his relatives he was in distress due to his imprisonment following years of service.
Zorlu was dismissed from the police force by an emergency decree following a coup attempt in 2016. A Turkish court later sentenced him to more than seven years in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization over alleged ties to the Gülen movement.
He was released pending appeal after spending 19 months in pretrial detention but was re-arrested on January 28, 2026, following the Supreme Court of Appeals’ decision to uphold his conviction.
The former officer, who had been living in Hatay, moved to İzmir with his family following deadly earthquakes in Turkey’s Southeast in February 2023. He had been supporting his family by working as a taxi driver.
Zorlu is survived by his wife and four children.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, 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 as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the 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 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.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
