A total of 2,282,069 people have come under scrutiny in Turkey over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement since a failed coup in 2016, according to justice ministry figures, with 1,561,908 facing no investigation but still exposed to lasting stigma associated with such accusations.
Turkish journalist Adem Yavuz Arslan of the TR724 news website said the figures show how years of stigmatization of the movement led to widespread accusations, stemming both from reports by members of the public and profiling by state institutions, against people for whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Arslan said the disparity between accusations and legal action showed how suspicion had preceded evidence and pointed to a systematic policy of state persecution.
According to official figures, while 1.56 million faced no investigation, investigations into another 373,642 people ended with prosecutors deciding not to pursue cases against them and 84,999 were ultimately acquitted.
Arslan pointed out that these groups together amounted to about 2.02 million, or roughly 88.5 percent of all those who came under scrutiny, for whom the process failed to result in a final conviction.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the Gülen movement, a worldwide civic initiative inspired by the ideas of Muslim 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.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) lawmaker and human rights advocate Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu said the figures showed how large numbers of people had been stigmatized through terrorism-related proceedings despite the lack of criminal convictions, describing the lasting social and economic consequences for those targeted as a form of “civil death.”
People accused of Gülen links have faced consequences even when prosecutors took no action against them or courts later acquitted them, including job losses, passport restrictions and barriers to public employment, while their family members have also faced social and economic hardship.
According to figures announced by Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, authorities have initiated legal proceedings against 720,338 people over alleged Gülen links since 2016, of whom 127,102 were convicted. Investigations or trials involving another 83,404 people are ongoing, while 10,485 people accused or convicted of involvement in the coup attempt or membership in the movement are still in prison.
