An İstanbul court has suspended the execution of a prison sentence of more than six years handed down over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement after Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the defendant’s rights had been violated, the Bold Medya news website reported.
The Constitutional Court unanimously found that the defendant’s right to a reasoned judgment, protected as part of the right to a fair trial, had been violated and ordered a retrial.
Acting on the decision, the İstanbul 33rd High Criminal Court suspended the execution of the sentence while maintaining an international travel ban on the defendant. The court scheduled a hearing for January 21, 2027, as part of the retrial proceedings.
The İstanbul court convicted the defendant in February 2021 of membership in a terrorist organization over alleged links to the Gülen movement.
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 designated the movement as 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.
The İstanbul court based the conviction on witness testimony, his attendance at religious gatherings, allegations that he invited others to attend them and his alleged use of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app 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.
In 2023 the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a landmark case that convictions based on ByLock use and other alleged Gülen-linked activities, such as having an account at a movement-affiliated bank, violated the rights to a fair trial, no punishment without law and freedom of association.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 127,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 10,485 still in prison and legal proceedings ongoing against 83,404 individuals.
