A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of 14 out of 51 people detained on January 12 in an ongoing crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement, the Halk TV news website reported.
Police detained 51 people, including 23 civil servants, in coordinated raids across 13 provinces as part of an investigation launched by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The detainees were accused of engaging in activities linked to the Gülen movement and of using ByLock, an encrypted messaging application once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim served as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
Eight detainees were released after testifying the prosecutors, while the remaining 43 were transported to the İstanbul courthouse. A criminal magistrate of peace ordered the arrest of 14 and released 29 under judicial supervision.
Turkish 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.
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.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
