Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Friday that Turkish courts have arrested 67 people out of 178 who were detained in nationwide operations over the past two weeks as part of an intensified crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement.
The detentions and arrests are part of a long-running crackdown on followers of Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic cleric who lived in exile in the United States until his death in October 2024. The Turkish government accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a failed coup on July 15, 2016, a charge the movement strongly denies. Gülen and his supporters consistently denied allegations of involvement in the coup or any affiliation with terrorism.
The detentions took place in raids across 45 provinces, including major cities such as İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir.
According to Yerlikaya’s statement on X, those apprehended were accused of involvement in the movement’s “current structure,” contacting movement members via pay phones and having used ByLock, an encrypted messaging application that was widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
ByLock has been labeled by Turkish authorities as a secret communication tool used by supporters of the Gülen movement. Despite this claim, no evidence has been presented linking messages sent via ByLock to the 2016 coup attempt. Similarly, the so-called “payphone investigations” rely solely on call records rather than content. Prosecutors argue that members of the movement used the same payphones to contact one another in succession. Under this theory, when one suspected member is identified in the call logs, others who made or received calls immediately before or after are also presumed to be guilty by association.
The Gülen movement is renowned worldwide for its contributions to education, social welfare and interfaith dialogue.
The Turkish government, however, labeled the group as a “terrorist organization” in May 2016, a designation not recognized by the United States, the European Union or major international bodies.
The movement’s followers, also known as Hizmet (Service) supporters, say they have been unfairly targeted in a campaign of political persecution aimed at silencing dissent and consolidating power. The post-coup purge has seen hundreds of thousands investigated and tens of thousands imprisoned on terrorism-related charges widely viewed as politically motivated.
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.