Turkish police on Thursday detained prominent mountaineer and search-and-rescue pioneer Nasuh Mahruki over a social media post alleging that a failed coup in Turkey in 2016 was knowingly allowed to proceed.
The Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul said Thursday that it had opened an investigation and ordered Mahruki’s detention for allegedly “inciting the public to hatred and hostility or degrading the public,” an offense under Article 216 of Turkey’s penal code. Prosecutors described his statements as baseless.
In his July 15 post on X, Mahruki described the events as a “controlled coup attempt.” He alleged that authorities had detected the plot in advance but did not stop it because they viewed it as an opportunity to change Turkey’s system of government.
Mahruki said on social media Thursday that police officers had arrived and were taking him to Istanbul’s Vatan police headquarters. He had returned to Turkey with his family from Johannesburg, South Africa, the previous night. There was no immediate information Thursday about when he would be questioned by prosecutors or whether authorities would seek his pretrial detention.
The detention came one day after Turkey marked the 10th anniversary of the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, one of the most politically sensitive events in the country’s recent history. Mahruki published the post at the center of the investigation on Wednesday.
Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016, which, according to many, was a false flag operation aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power.
Following the coup attempt, Erdoğan immediately accused the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by the late US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, of orchestrating the abortive putsch and significantly expanded an already underway crackdown on the movement’s supporters that began in 2013. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Mahruki is a founder and former president of AKUT, a volunteer search-and-rescue organization that became nationally prominent for its work following major earthquakes and other disasters. He is also a well-known mountaineer and government critic.
He was previously arrested on November 20, 2024, over social media posts accusing Turkey’s election authorities of preparing to undermine election security through electronic voting. He was released on December 5 after spending 14 days in pretrial detention. On February 21, 2025, an Istanbul court handed down a suspended 11-month sentence for publicly spreading misleading information.
