A Turkish lawyer has claimed that the police have been illegally monitoring the daily activities of a former inmate who had previously been imprisoned over alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Lawyer and human rights advocate Gökhan Güneş shared court documents on X, which said the former inmate, whose name was redacted, had been under police surveillance until 2024, although he had been released in 2021. It is not known whether the inmate was released on parole or if he had served his full sentence.
The court documents revealed that authorities collected and archived personal details about the individual — including marital status, residence history and education records — without a court order.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in December 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan 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 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. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The former inmate filed a lawsuit in 2024 challenging the surveillance. Court documents show that the plaintiff requested removal from police monitoring records and for all collected data to be permanently deleted. In his petition he argued that the surveillance violated constitutional protections under Turkish law and the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly the right to privacy and family life. It also demanded the suspension of surveillance activities due to their unlawful nature. In response to the lawsuit, the court ordered authorities to explain the legal and factual grounds for the surveillance.
In their defense, the police argued that the monitoring was “intelligence-based,” carries no legal consequences and cannot be used as evidence in judicial or administrative proceedings unless independently verified, citing a directive issued in 1983 that allows police to conduct surveillance if the person had served time for engaging in terrorism.
The directive was issued during a period of military rule in Turkey that began with a coup d’état in 1980 and led to the imposition of martial law. The aim was to track whether the person still had ties to a terrorist organization or a criminal network. It is currently not known how many people have been affected by this practice.
The police suggested that the case be dismissed because it did not involve a formal administrative order.
Criticizing this suggestion, Güneş accused officials of sidestepping legal scrutiny by citing vague interpretations of public authority laws. He challenged authorities to explain the legal grounds for tracking individuals and archiving their data indefinitely, asking how the practice complies with privacy and data protections outlined in Turkey’s Constitution and the 2016 Personal Data Protection Law (Law No. 6698).
Güneş further argued that intelligence gathered through such surveillance has been exploited to fabricate investigations and stage raids under the pretense of counterterrorism efforts. He accused authorities of using informal monitoring as a basis for judicial investigations, calling it a “coordinated plot” against former prisoners. Referring to the practice a “shameful stain” on the rule of law, he demanded an immediate end to what he described as unlawful profiling.
Since the coup attempt, more than 705,172 people have been investigated on terrorism related charges due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement. There are at least 13,251 people in prison who are being held in pretrial detention or convicted of terrorism charges in Gülen-linked trials.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
Güneş claimed that all former prisoners could be subjected to monitoring, regardless of whether they were released through acquittal, parole or after serving their full sentences. While authorities assert that monitoring is limited to five years, Güneş alleged that security commissions routinely extend surveillance periods, even for those acquitted, effectively enabling indefinite tracking.
