Ali Aki, a former schoolteacher who is severely disabled, was arrested and charged with receiving financial support from the faith-based Gülen movement, as part of Turkey’s ongoing crackdown on the movement.
According to the TR724 news website, Aki was detained on July 15 at his home in the southern province of Osmaniye and transferred to İstanbul’s Vatan Police Department, in conjunction with an operation run out of that city. He was held for three days before being arrested on Monday.
Prosecutors have focused on bank transfers and aid packages as part of the case against him.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following the abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Aki and his wife, both educators removed from their posts by emergency decree, were acquitted in a 2022 trial over alleged links to the Gülen movement. Since his dismissal, Aki had worked in physically demanding jobs, which left him with a serious spinal injury. He now suffers from chronic pain and has been advised to undergo spinal surgery, limiting his ability to leave home or work.
In a widely shared video interview, Aki described the social fallout of the accusations, including being rejected by his family. He recounted being labelled a traitor and told he would not be buried in the family cemetery. “What did I do to deserve this?” he asked, adding that he relied on small donations for survival, donations now presented as criminal evidence.
According to the latest figures from the Justice Ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted for alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
