Turkey’s Interior Ministry has suspended 445 police officers working for the Security Directorate General (EGM) due to suspected links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The development was announced by Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya on his social media account.
Yerlikaya said the officers’ alleged Gülen links were discovered based on a retroactive scanning of digital material.
The suspended officers are to face an administrative investigation, Yerlikaya said.
While the minister did not explain the grounds for the mass suspension, Turkish authorities typically rely on bank accounts and the use of a mobile messaging application called ByLock to identify people affiliated with the movement.
The government has recently signaled unwillingness to comply with European Court of Human Rights judgments that found the use of the application not to constitute a reliable piece of evidence or a criminal offense.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the 2013 corruption investigations, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
