A former Quran teacher in Turkey has been sent to prison after the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld her conviction on terrorism charges over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the TR724 news website reported.
Zeynep Çoban was sentenced to six years, 10 months in prison by the İzmir 16th High Criminal Court in March 2020. The conviction was based on activities that Turkish courts have treated as evidence of Gülen movement affiliation, including depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya, attending religious gatherings, reciting the Quran at these gatherings and sharing social media posts authorities said were aligned with the movement.
Çoban, the mother of two children aged 14 and 6, was detained in May 2017 and released seven months later pending trial. After the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld her sentence, she was sent to Denizli T Type Women’s Prison.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the US-based 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 later 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.
Çoban denied the accusations throughout the proceedings, saying she had worked as an instructor at Quran courses affiliated with a local mufti’s office and had visited homes to recite the Quran upon request.
She also said she worked for one year as a religious studies teacher at the Gülen movement-affiliated Güzelbahçe Yamanlar College in İzmir, adding that she had been seeking teaching work and accepted the job after the school offered her a position.
Çoban’s request for a retrial following the European Court of Human Rights’ 2025 ruling in Karslı and Others v. Türkiye was rejected by the court, which said the judgment applied only to the applicants in that case and could not be treated as a precedent requiring that her case be reopened.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the Gülen 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.
