A Dutch court has overturned the rejection of asylum applications by a Turkish couple linked to the Gülen movement, ruling that they faced a risk of persecution and that the lack of criminal proceedings did not justify denying them protection.
The Hague District Court found on September 3 that the Dutch immigration authorities had wrongly rejected the couple’s applications and ordered the authorities to grant them international protection as refugees.
Dutch authorities did not dispute the couple’s links to the Gülen movement but rejected their applications because they were not facing an investigation or prosecution in Turkey and had not shown that Turkish authorities would target them if they returned.
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 husband, who had studied at a university affiliated with the Gülen movement and volunteered at a movement-linked institution, had told Dutch authorities that Turkish police approached him in January 2023 and asked him to become a secret witness, telling him they knew about his past involvement with the movement. When he refused, officers warned that he could be arrested. He left Turkey several months later.
The court said the encounter showed that he was already on the Turkish authorities’ radar and that the fact he was not arrested before leaving Turkey did not show otherwise.
The wife was prosecuted in Turkey in 2020 over alleged links to the Gülen movement but was acquitted in 2023 due to insufficient evidence. The court said the acquittal did not rule out future prosecution, citing country information showing that Turkish authorities have reopened cases against people previously acquitted or not prosecuted over alleged ties to the movement.
The court also considered the couple’s involvement with Prizma, a Gülen-affiliated organization in the Netherlands, citing information that the organization and Gülen-linked individuals are monitored by Turkish authorities.
The court concluded that the wife’s previous prosecution, their family ties, their activities in the Netherlands and the husband’s encounter with Turkish police increased their risk of persecution if returned to Turkey and that they therefore met the requirements for refugee protection.
In March the Dutch Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, upheld a stricter policy requiring individual assessments of asylum applications from alleged Gülen movement followers but said authorities could not dismiss risks stemming from family ties or Gülen-linked activities abroad.
A Dutch government report published in February 2025 said Turkish authorities continued to monitor and prosecute people over alleged links to the Gülen movement. The report also documented discrimination against their family members and Turkish efforts to target alleged movement followers abroad.
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.
