A woman who was jailed in Turkey over alleged ties to the faith-based Gülen movement claims she was subjected to repeated strip-searches and sexual abuse while in custody, according to a newly released account.
In a detailed interview with the TR724 news website, Filiz Turun said she was repeatedly forced to strip naked while in police custody and in prison, was subjected to invasive searches despite undergoing treatment for uterine cancer and was later taken to a hospital for surgery under the guard of male officers who refused to leave the operating room.
Turn said she decided to speak publicly after learning that children from families targeted in a crackdown on the Gülen movement had recently been detained in Gaziantep.
“What happens there is hidden,” she said. “I could not stay silent anymore.”
In May 2025 Turkish police carried out a sweeping operation directed by the Gaziantep Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office that took 208 people into custody across 47 provinces, most of them university students and recent graduates, as part of an investigation into alleged links to the Gülen movement. Many of those questioned were accused under counterterrorism laws of activities that rights groups say are otherwise lawful, including travel for study or shared housing with roommates. Lawyers reported that some defendants were denied timely access to legal counsel.
Turun said the first strip-search took place after she was detained at a police station in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, where officers made her undress in a glass-walled area visible to people passing by. She added that she was searched again later the same day in another room without curtains and then a third time after a judge ordered her jailed and she was taken to Gaziantep L-Type Prison.
At the prison, she said, a female guard ordered her to lie on the floor and carried out an internal vaginal search even after Turun warned that she was undergoing treatment for uterine cancer, leaving her bleeding and in shock.
According to Turun her condition worsened in the weeks that followed, and she repeatedly asked to see a doctor before being taken to a state hospital under escort by male guards. Doctors there demanded that her handcuffs be removed so they could examine her, she said, but officers refused, leaving only one cuff undone after an argument.
Turun said doctors later scheduled her for surgery to treat the bleeding. When the day arrived, she said prison officials at first refused to take her to the hospital. She was eventually transported to the facility, but a male guard followed her into the room and refused to leave despite objections from doctors and nurses.
“They argued while I was lying on the operating table,” she said. “In the end the doctor said he would go ahead if I accepted it that way. I felt I had no choice.”
Turun stated that the guard remained inside the room throughout the operation and later made degrading remarks to her.
She also said that during a later trip to the hospital she was put in a transport vehicle with a male criminal suspect who verbally harassed her and described acts of sexual violence throughout the journey. Guards ignored her complaints, she said.
After she reported the incidents to prison officials, Turun said the guards warned her not to file a complaint and threatened that conditions in her cell would worsen if she spoke out.
Turun was arrested in 2019 and soon after sentenced to more than six years in prison over alleged links to the Gülen movement. Turun said she was held in prison for about five-and-a-half months before being released pending appeal. Fearing she would be jailed again if her conviction was upheld, she said she and her family fled Turkey in March 2024 by crossing the Evros River into Greece in a small inflatable boat that began to sink during the journey. She said the family narrowly avoided drowning before reaching land.
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.
