Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for renewed vigilance against the faith-based Gülen movement in a message posted Monday on social media, as authorities detained 13 suspects in the latest of a series of operations that have swept up nearly 500 people over the past two weeks, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.
The latest detentions were carried out on Tuesday in simultaneous raids across 10 provinces, including İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir. Prosecutors issued warrants for 31 suspects accused of providing financial support to the movement.
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 as 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.
In a May 12 message on X, Erdoğan reinforced the government’s hardline stance, calling on public institutions to remain alert in the fight against the Gülen movement.
“I believe that, like our security and intelligence agencies, our judiciary will continue to show the necessary attention, vigilance and sensitivity,” he wrote.
Erdoğan also described the movement as a “malignant structure” and warned that “any weakness” in confronting it would come at “a heavy cost” to Turkey.
The remarks, directed at the state’s legal and law enforcement institutions, have attracted criticism for signaling political expectations of the judiciary and other public institutions involved in the crackdown.
Turkish authorities detained at least 218 people in three separate operations that took place April 27-30. On May 5, 33 more were detained. A day later, police took 208 individuals into custody across 47 provinces; 77 of them, including university students and recent graduates, were subsequently jailed pending trial. On May 9, 23 people were detained in connection with a popular döner restaurant chain recently seized by the government over suspected ties to the movement.
According to a statement from Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç ahead of the eighth anniversary of the coup attempt last July, a total of 705,172 people have been investigated since the coup attempt on terrorism or coup-related charges due to their alleged links to the movement. Tunç said at the time that there were 13,251 people in prison in pretrial detention or convicted of terrorism in Gülen-linked trials.
These figures are thought to have increased over the past 10 months since the operations targeting Gülen followers continue unabated. Erdoğan and several government ministers said on many occasions that there would be no “slackening” in the fight against the movement following the cleric’s death at 83.