Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 12 people in two separate investigations involving alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
In the first case, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Tuesday that six suspects were identified as part of what authorities described as the group’s “current financial network.” The suspects were allegedly identified through digital evidence, surveillance and statements. Police from Ankara’s counterterrorism unit are carrying out operations to locate and detain the individuals.
A second investigation focuses on what prosecutors described as the movement’s covert operations within the judiciary. Detention warrants were issued for six additional suspects, including one currently serving as a public official. Raids were launched simultaneously in Ankara and two other provinces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members 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 the 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.
Since the coup attempt, the Turkish government has accepted such activities as having an account at now-shuttered Bank Asya, one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks at the time; using the ByLock messaging application, an encrypted messaging app that was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play; and subscribing to the now-shut-down 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.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
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.
