Turkey’s growing number of extradition requests to Finland is part of a “witch hunt” targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement and government critics, experts say, the Finnish Yle public broadcaster reported.
Documents reviewed by Yle show that Turkey requested the extradition of 12 people from Finland in 2025, up from seven a year earlier, with many of the cases linked to alleged ties to the Gülen movement and appearing political in nature.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted 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. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
According to the documents, some extradition requests cited activities such as having an account at a specific bank, using a particular messaging application or subscribing to a newspaper as evidence of terrorism-related offenses.
Since the failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government has accepted such activities as having an account at the 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.
Toni Alaranta, a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said the increase may be connected to Finland’s accession to NATO, after Helsinki pledged closer cooperation with Turkey on counterterrorism.
“It may be that Turkey thinks that with the help of its agreement, these people could be transferred from Finland more easily,” Alaranta told Yle.
He described the pattern of requests as a “witch hunt,” saying they often target ordinary individuals and critics of the Erdoğan government who may have no involvement in violent activity.
Finland has generally declined such requests, citing legal standards that bar extradition if the alleged acts are not crimes under Finnish law or if there is a risk of political persecution. Courts have also blocked extraditions in cases where individuals could face discrimination based on political views or background.
In one case, Finland refused to extradite a man accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, after determining that he could face persecution.
In another, authorities rejected a request involving online criticism of Erdoğan, noting the offense would not warrant extradition under Finnish law.
Overall, Finland received 15 extradition requests from countries outside the European Union in 2025, but only one — involving a Uruguayan citizen convicted of a sexual offense against a minor — resulted in extradition, according to Yle.
