Turkish courts have arrested more than 113,000 people over the past nine years as part of an extensive crackdown that followed a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday, citing data from the police’s counterterrorism department, Turkish Minute reported.
More than 250 people died during the events of that night, which the government claimed was an attempt by military officers to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Tuesday will mark the ninth anniversary of the coup attempt.
Erdoğan immediately accused the faith-based Gülen movement, led by Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen, of orchestrating the putsch.
Gülen, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States until his death in October 2024, strongly denied any involvement and called for an independent international investigation, a demand that was never met.
Since then, the Turkish government has pursued an aggressive campaign against real and perceived members of the movement. A total of 390,354 people have been detained on charges broadly categorized under terrorism or coup-related offenses. Of these, 113,837 have been arrested.
The purge reached nearly all parts of Turkish society. Among those detained were military officers, police personnel, civil servants, teachers, academics, judges, prosecutors, journalists, businessman and even housewives.
High-ranking officers, such as 216 generals and over 15,000 other military personnel, were detained along with more than 3,700 judges and 1,300 prosecutors. Mass detentions have also been carried out by the gendarmerie, which detained more than 27,000 individuals.
As part of those investigations, 105,249 of the suspects detained in police operations and 8,588 of those taken into custody in gendarmerie operations were arrested, bringing the total number of arrests in the investigations to 113,837.
In İstanbul alone about 13,000 people have been arrested. Nationwide, more than 15,000 police officers, including over 6,000 with rank, were arrested. Thousands of others from a wide range of professions as well as elderly citizens and pregnant women were detained in sweeping operations that often relied on tenuous evidence or anonymous witness statements.
In addition to the mass arrests, Turkish courts imposed judicial supervision measures — such as travel bans and compulsory check-ins — on more than 118,000 people. Another 153,000 were released without charge after initial questioning. Authorities say more than 31,000 others are still being sought by law enforcement.
Separate investigations targeted the movement’s alleged use of encrypted communication tools, such as the ByLock app, and public pay phones, leading to nearly 26,000 more detentions and over 9,100 arrests. Many of those detained were pressured to confess or implicate others under the threat of prolonged detention or loss of legal protections. Under Turkey’s “effective remorse” laws, more than 9,500 people gave statements that were later used to prosecute others in the movement.
Although the European Court of Human Rights has in many cases made clear that use of the ByLock messaging app does not constitute a criminal offense, detentions or arrests of individuals continue in Turkey for their use of the ByLock application.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government accepted such activities as having an account at the Bank Asya, one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks at the time; using the ByLock messaging application, which was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play; and subscribing to the Zaman daily or other publications affiliated with members of the movement as benchmarks for identifying and arresting alleged followers of the Gülen movement on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.
The ECtHR said in many cases that these activities do not constitute a crime.
Following the coup attempt, the government declared a state of emergency and ruled by decree for two years. During this period, more than 130,000 public servants and more than 24,000 members of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) were summarily dismissed from their jobs by executive orders that bypassed judicial and parliamentary oversight.
Dismissed civil servants were not only removed from public office but also blacklisted from future employment in both the public and private sectors. Restrictions were placed on their ability to obtain passports and digital notations in the national social security database discouraged private employers from hiring them. Many of those affected faced lifelong economic and social hardship without legal recourse.
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have repeatedly criticized the post-coup crackdown for undermining due process, suppressing dissent, and targeting a religious group without credible evidence of wrongdoing. Despite these warnings, the purges and prosecutions continue nearly a decade later.