Turkish authorities have detained 62 people across the country over the past two weeks as part of a continuing crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Sunday.
Yerlikaya said on X that suspects have been taken into custody in police operations in 32 provinces, including İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Konya and Erzurum.
Four of the detainees were arrested and four were released under judicial supervision, while proceedings continue for the remainder.
The individuals were detained on accusations of alleged links to the Gülen movement, contacting members of the movement via pay phones, sharing content on social media that authorities labeled as propaganda and providing financial support to the families of people who were expelled from public service via decree-laws and were in prison due to alleged links to the movement or who were just released.
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 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.
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.
