Turkish authorities have over the past week detained 200 individuals due to alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish media reported.
In the latest of these kind of operations, police detained 110 people on Tuesday in coordinated raids across 23 provinces. They included 13 former police officers who had been fired previously due to alleged Gülen links, two non-commissioned military officers and two academics as well as teachers, doctors, a retired police officer and military cadets. The detainees were accused of engaging in Gülen-linked activities at universities, the military and other sectors.
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 members of his family and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement a terrorist organization and began pursuing its followers. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The accusations against the suspects include staying in “secret” houses where alleged Gülen followers go into hiding in order to avoid arrest, contacting senior members of the movement via pay phone, favoritism in state exams and hiring due to their proximity to the movement and using the ByLock mobile phone application.
The so-called “payphone investigations” are based on call records. The prosecutors allege that a member of the Gülen movement used a single payphone to consecutively call all of his contacts. Based on that assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call records, it is assumed that other numbers called right before or after the primary call also belong to people with Gülen links. The authorities do not possess the content of the calls in question. The supposition of guilt is solely based on the order of the calls made from the phone.
Another large-scale operation spanned eight provinces on the same day and led to 41 detentions. Authorities claimed those apprehended had ties to the Gülen movement’s alleged infiltration of public institutions and military.
Seven more individuals were detained on Tuesday across five provinces for alleged links to a “secret military structure” within the Gülen network.
On the same day, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the detention of seven suspects as part of an investigation into alleged exam fraud linked to the Gülen movement. Authorities claimed the suspects, all of whom passed the 2012 exam for state revenue assistants, had access to the exam questions beforehand. Similar claims have been used against other civil service applicants.
On Wednesday, police in İzmir detained 17 individuals as part of an investigation led by the İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office Terror Crimes Investigation Bureau. Authorities said the suspects were identified through their social media activity, which included posts praising Fethullah Gülen, who passed away in exile in October.
In İstanbul and Çankırı province, police detained 18 people on Friday. The accusations involved using payphones to communicate with other members, staying in Gülen-linked dormitories and using Bylock. Three of the suspects were public servants.
ByLock, once widely available online, has been considered a secret tool of communication among supporters of the movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
The latest detentions come despite a landmark ruling from the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in September 2023 that found the use of ByLock did not constitute a criminal offense. The Grand Chamber ruled in the case of former teacher Yüksel Yalçınkaya that the use of the ByLock application was not an offense in itself and was insufficient evidence for an arrest.
Since the coup attempt, at least 705,172 people have been investigated on terrorism or coup-related charges due to their alleged links to the movement. There are currently at least 13,251 people in prison as a result of pretrial detention or convictions related to terrorism in Gülen-linked trials.
