Turkish prosecutors investigated 340,052 people in 2025 over alleged political and terrorism-related offenses, official statistics show, highlighting the scale of politically driven investigations in the country.
The investigations were conducted under legal provisions covering crimes against the constitutional order, terrorism-related offenses, crimes against state sovereignty and security, violations of laws on meetings and demonstrations and violations of the law on political parties.
Data from the Justice Ministry show that the largest number of investigations involved alleged crimes against the constitutional order, including coup-related charges, with 186,472 investigated, followed by terrorism-related offenses, which involved 46,750 people.
The report does not specify which groups were targeted in cases related to alleged membership in criminal or terrorist organizations.
Broader figures in the report show the scale of criminal investigations in Turkey beyond political cases. Authorities listed 14,394,646 individuals as suspects in 11,671,672 investigation files, suggesting that roughly one in five people in the country has been subject to a criminal investigation.
Of those, 6,726,783 people were included in investigations launched in 2025 alone. While 5.6 million investigation files were concluded, prosecutors filed charges in 1.5 million cases.
The figures were included in the Justice Ministry’s annual judicial statistics report, which covers the period from 2016 to 2025.
The report points to a sharp rise in both political cases and applications to the Constitutional Court following a coup attempt in 2016.
Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016, which, according to many, was a false flag operation aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power. The abortive putsch killed 251 people and wounded more than a thousand others.
According to the data, the number of cases filed in high criminal courts on political and terrorism-related charges rose by 229.8 percent in 2025 compared to 2016.
Over the same period, the number of applications concluded by the Constitutional Court rose by 342 percent, increasing from 16,089 in 2016 to 71,175 in 2025.
The report shows a marked increase in overall caseloads, with the total number of files across all types of offenses rising by 57.7 percent.
The report was released amid growing concern over judicial independence in Turkey and the use of criminal investigations and prosecutions to silence dissent.
Rights groups and bar associations have repeatedly warned about political pressure on the judiciary and the growing use of criminal proceedings against dissidents and the lawyers who defend them.
In the latest global Rule of Law Index released in October 2025 by the World Justice Project, Turkey was ranked 118th out of 143 countries, falling one place from the previous year.
