Turkish businessman Taner Nakıboğlu has been jailed again over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, just two weeks after a court acquitted him and ordered his release, the Habertürk news website reported.
The Gaziantep 10th High Criminal Court issued the arrest order on October 9 after prosecutors challenged his September 24 acquittal by the Gaziantep 2nd High Criminal Court on charges related to the alleged restructuring of the Gülen movement. Nakıboğlu was subsequently detained and sent back to prison.
Nakıboğlu was first arrested in July 2016 over alleged links to the Gülen movement. In November 2018 the Gaziantep 9th High Criminal Court sentenced him to 15 years in prison on charges of leading an armed terrorist organization.
The Gaziantep Regional Court of Justice upheld the conviction in May 2019. However, Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals overturned it in June 2022, ruling that his alleged actions should be assessed as membership rather than leadership of a terrorist organization. The Gaziantep 9th High Criminal Court released him in September 2022 after more than six years in prison, imposing a travel ban while the case continued.
Nakıboğlu was arrested again in May 2025 in a separate investigation into the alleged restructuring of the Gülen movement and spent nearly 16 months in pretrial detention before his acquittal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated Erdoğan 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.
Nakıboğlu was a senior executive at the Gaziantep-based Naksan Holding, a major Turkish industrial conglomerate that controlled more than 50 companies in sectors including industry, energy, construction and transportation. The holding was seized by the government in 2016 over alleged links to the Gülen movement and subsequently transferred to the state-run Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF).
The TMSF sold major assets of the group, including Naksan Plastik, which was auctioned in 2022 for 1.48 billion lira (about $110 million). Assets belonging to Royal Halı, Atlas Halı and Nakpilsa were also transferred to a private company in 2024.
Turkish authorities have seized 1,326 companies with assets worth $32 billion over alleged links to the Gülen movement since the 2016 coup attempt, according to a September 2026 report by the Netherlands-based human rights group Stichting Justice Square.
In 2018 his father, Cahit Nakıboğlu, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison, his brother Emre Nakıboğlu to more than 11 years and another family member, Ferhan Nakıboğlu, to more than two years. The Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of Cahit and Emre Nakıboğlu in 2022 but upheld Ferhan Nakıboğlu’s sentence.
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.
