Turkish authorities have detained or issued arrest warrants for 64 current and former employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including several senior diplomats, on accusations of ties to the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Minute reported.
Turkish media outlets including Sözcü and ABC said 132 ministry personnel were identified in an intelligence-led probe, with 64 detention or arrest orders issued.
Among those named in the reports are former Frankfurt consul general Burak Karartı, Münster consul general Arif Hakan Yeter and former chargé d’affaires in Tel Aviv Gürçay Şeker.
Sözcü and other media said Karartı and Şeker were jailed at Silivri Prison near İstanbul following court appearances, while Yeter is reportedly wanted on an arrest warrant after leaving the country.
Prosecutors have not publicly confirmed the detentions or released the names of those charged.
The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) was cited in local reports as supporting the investigation.
However, under Turkish law, arrests and pretrial detention decisions are made by prosecutors and criminal courts, with police executing warrants. Neither the Ankara nor the İstanbul chief public prosecutor’s offices had issued a written statement by Tuesday identifying the detainees or outlining the charges.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting 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.
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 an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding.
Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, and more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
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.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
More than 660 foreign ministry employees have been removed from public service since 2016, according to figures provided by then–foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in parliament in 2022.
In 2019 a wave of arrests targeting former foreign ministry personnel drew torture allegations documented by the Ankara Bar Association, which said detainees were beaten and threatened during interrogation.
