A new report is challenging European assessments that Turkey’s crackdown on people linked to the Gülen movement has eased, arguing that lower prosecution numbers conceal a change in how authorities pursue alleged members and supporters.
The July 27 report by law professor emeritus Johan Vande Lanotte examined 342 law enforcement operations reported in Turkish media and on social media in 2025 that resulted in 4,386 detentions. It found that authorities increasingly targeted social contacts, financial assistance, employment and other activities they considered evidence that the movement was being maintained or reorganized.
The findings challenge assessments used by immigration authorities in several European countries, particularly the Netherlands, that have cited declining prosecution numbers and changes in Turkish court practice when evaluating asylum claims from alleged or actual members of the movement. Vande Lanotte argues that those assessments rely too heavily on patterns from the years immediately after a failed coup in 2016 and do not adequately account for more recent prosecutions.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, 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 the coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup or any terrorist activity.
The report acknowledges that the overall scale of the crackdown has fallen sharply since the first years after the failed coup. An average of 1,149 operations a year were reported from 2016 through 2019, compared with 431 annually from 2021 through 2025. Average annual detentions fell from some 28,100 to 5,950. The report found, however, that the numbers have largely stabilized since 2022 rather than continuing to substantially decline.
Vande Lanotte argues that the numerical decline gives an incomplete picture because the focus of investigations has changed.
Nearly half of the roughly 100 large-scale operations recorded in 2025 targeted what Turkish authorities describe as the movement’s “current structure,” resulting in about 1,500 detentions, according to the report.
Authorities cited activities including organizing gatherings, preparing students for exams, housing students, arranging foreign travel, posting favorable messages about Gülen or the movement on social media and maintaining contacts with other alleged members. Investigators also cited communications through prepaid SIM cards and public telephone booths, as well as applications including WhatsApp and Jitsi.
Some investigations continued to rely on the encrypted messaging application ByLock and accounts at the now-defunct Bank Asya, even though both date back about a decade.
Turkish authorities have considered ByLock to be a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite a lack of evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
Although the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has in many cases made clear that use of the ByLock messaging app does not constitute a criminal offense, detentions and arrests of individuals continue in Turkey for their alleged use of the ByLock application.
Another 1,033 people were detained in 16 operations targeting people or companies accused of supporting individuals who had been prosecuted, convicted or dismissed because of alleged Gülen links, according to the report.
Those cases included financial assistance to families of convicted people and investigations of companies accused of employing significant numbers of people associated with the movement, some of which were put under government-appointed trusteeships.
The report says Turkish authorities have characterized some financial assistance to affected families as financing terrorism or helping reorganize the movement. It also cites cases involving companies that employed convicted Gülen-linked people and one in which a convicted person gave lessons to the child of another affected family.
Vande Lanotte argues that such cases have made the grounds for prosecution less predictable because ordinary social or economic relationships can become evidence of continued involvement in the movement.
The findings also challenge the view that current prosecutions are concentrated mainly on the military, police and judiciary, sectors heavily targeted after the coup attempt.
The report identified 22 military-related operations resulting in 370 detentions in 2025 and eight police-related operations involving 201 people. Vande Lanotte argues that the lower numbers in those sectors are more likely the result of earlier mass dismissals and prosecutions than a deliberate narrowing of the crackdown.
The distinction could be significant for European asylum policy.
A Dutch Foreign Ministry country report published in February 2025 emphasized declining prosecution numbers and said Turkish authorities continued to focus primarily on Gülen-linked people in the security services and judiciary. A subsequent policy change said prosecutions had decreased in intensity and that the process had become less arbitrary as evidentiary criteria were applied more strictly.
The Dutch Council of State upheld the revised approach on March 25, 2026. It found a “quantifiable decrease” in prosecutions and said there were indications that Turkish courts, particularly higher courts, were scrutinizing evidence more closely. It also accepted that prosecutions focused primarily on alleged Gülen members in the judicial and security apparatus. Gülen supporters nevertheless continue to be considered a risk group under Dutch asylum policy.
Vande Lanotte disputes both conclusions, saying his examination of 2025 cases shows that other categories now account for more operations and detentions and that the range of activities used as evidence has expanded.
The report also assesses Turkey’s response to rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the cases of Yüksel Yalçınkaya and Saban Yasak.
The ECtHR found that Turkish courts could not automatically infer membership in an armed terrorist organization from activities such as using ByLock or taking part in organizations later associated with the Gülen movement without establishing the criminal intent required for a conviction.
Vande Lanotte says Turkish courts have imposed stricter requirements for proving that someone actually used ByLock but have not made the broader change required by the European court. His report argues that courts continue to infer criminal intent from ByLock use and other legal religious, organizational or social activities rather than examining whether defendants knowingly intended to participate in a terrorist organization.
Vande Lanotte represented the applicants in the Yalçınkaya and Yasak cases before the ECtHR and was involved in the Turkey Tribunal, a civil society initiative that examined alleged human rights violations in Turkey. He says he has not represented asylum applicants and based the new study primarily on documented law enforcement operations rather than interviews.
The report concludes that the decline in the number of prosecutions should therefore not be treated as evidence that the crackdown itself has eased.
Instead, Vande Lanotte says its focus has moved toward social and economic activity that authorities interpret as evidence of efforts to sustain or rebuild the movement, leaving those affected with less certainty about what conduct could result in prosecution.
