A Turkish court on Thursday arrested 24 people, most of them women, for providing Ramadan aid to families of individuals imprisoned or dismissed from their jobs over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the TR724 news website reported.
The 24 were among 42 people detained in dawn raids across six provinces on April 2 in an investigation by the Manisa Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, with the remaining 18 released under judicial supervision.
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 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.
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 investigation nearly a decade later.
