A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of a former İstanbul police chief who was part of the team that led corruption investigations in 2013, on charges of alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run TRT Haber reported.
Hayati Başdağ, who was sought on detention warrants issued by multiple courts in Ankara and İstanbul on various allegations including membership in a terrorist organization, was detained in İstanbul’s Fatih district.
He is accused of engaging in activities linked to the Gülen movement, based on witness testimony and his use of ByLock, an encrypted messaging application once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim served as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
Başdağ was among 143 police officials detained following the December 2013 corruption investigations. His arrest photo in July 2014 became a symbol of what critics called the political persecution of officers behind the corruption probes. He was later dismissed from Turkish National Police by an emergency decree after a coup attempt in July 2016.
He was released in 2020 while proceedings were ongoing and later sentenced to prison in April 2022 but evaded authorities and remained a fugitive until his recent detention.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the 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 failed coup or any terrorist activity.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of 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.
