Turkish authorities on Friday detained Yasir Gülen, the nephew of the late Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, on accusations of terrorism, the Aktif Haber news website reported.
The detention took place in İstanbul’s Ümraniye district as part of an operation carried out by the counterterrorism unit of the İstanbul police and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
Yasir Gülen, the son of Fethullah Gülen’s brother Salih Gülen and a former academic dismissed by an emergency decree, was the subject of a detention warrant issued by the İstanbul 8th Criminal Magistrate of Peace on the accusation of “membership in an armed terrorist organization.” Authorities cited depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya and attendance at social gatherings linked to the Gülen movement as the basis for allegations of “membership in a terrorist organization.”
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. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that remained in effect until July 19, 2018. During this period the government carried out a purge on the pretext of an anti-coup fight by issuing a number of decree-laws. Over 130,000 public servants were removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by those decrees, subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Since the 2016 coup attempt, Turkish authorities have continued to target relatives of Fethullah Gülen.
Salih Gülen, who had been wanted on accusations of “membership in an armed terrorist organization” and “violating the constitution,” died in 2019 while in hiding in İstanbul. His death was only publicly announced by relatives on social media after a secret burial.
Fethullah Gülen’s other brother, Kutbettin Gülen, was sentenced in 2018 to over 11 years in prison. In 2023 his niece Asiye Gülen and her husband were also arrested on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization.”
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.
