Turkish police have detained a former governor of Turkey’s eastern Iğdır province whose 11-year prison sentence for alleged links to the Gülen movement was upheld by an appeals court and who has been at large for several years, the Birgün daily reported on Tuesday.
The Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara.
A coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that left 249 people dead and more than a thousand injured was immediately blamed on the movement by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Fethullah Gülen strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but Erdoğan – who called the coup attempt “a gift from God” – and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
Former governor Ahmet Pek, who was previously a high-ranking police chief and was appointed Iğdır governor in 2012, was detained on February 14, 2016 on charges of membership in an “armed terrorist organization,” i.e., the Gülen movement.
He was arrested primarily due to his prominent role in a previous investigation into Turkey-based Iran operatives.
The Tevhid-Selam network, an organization with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), came under investigation in Turkey for its involvement in unsolved murders and acts of violence. Despite substantial evidence, the investigation was stifled and discredited by the government, leading to a widespread crackdown on the police and judicial officials involved in the case.
Pek was arrested in February 2016 and released on May 4, 2016 pending trial.
Pek was again arrested in the aftermath of the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, and this time was imprisoned until July 18, 2018, when he was released while his trial was ongoing. He was convicted in May 2019.
Police in the eastern Turkish province of Sivas reportedly found him in a house where he had been living incognito for some time.
