Turkey arrests 72 people for alleged links to Gülen

Turkish police have arrested 72 people in 17 provinces for their alleged links to the Gülen religious movement, the Stockholm Freedom Center reported Thursday, citing Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

FETÖ'YE YÖNELİK OPERASYONLAR DEVAM EDİYOR
1⃣7⃣ it is from FETÖ'ye yönelik son 4 gündür yapılan “KISKAÇ-19” operasyonlarında 7⃣2⃣ şüpheli yakalandı

FETÖ'cülere göz açtırmayacağız. Aziz milletimizin huzuru, birlik ve beraberliği için güvenlik güçlerimizin üstün gayretleriyle… pic.twitter.com/7VVLK1STXo

– Ali Yerlikaya (@AliYerlikaya) June 6, 2024

Yerlikaya said the detainees included suspects involved in the movement's alleged infiltration of the police and justice system, as well as people accused of secretly communicating with their contacts within the movement via public telephones.

“Payphone investigations” are based on call recordings. Prosecutors assume that a member of the Gülen movement used the same public telephone to call all of his contacts consecutively. Based on this assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call recordings, it is assumed that the other numbers called just before or after this call also belong to people with links to Gülen.

People denounced as members of the movement by other people or people on the run were also arrested. Their sentences for links to Gülen were upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted supporters of the Gülen movement since corruption investigations in December 2013, which involved former Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his entourage.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a plot against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement a terrorist organization and began targeting its members. He intensified the repression of the movement following an aborted putsch in 2016 of which he accused Gülen of being the organizer. Gülen and the movement categorically deny any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

In addition to the thousands of people imprisoned, many other supporters of the Gülen movement have had to flee Turkey to escape government repression.

Turkish authorities regularly rely on witness statements to identify and prosecute members of the group.

Defendants in trials against the movement are often encouraged to benefit from the country's repentance laws, which allow reduced sentences in exchange for denouncing other members of the group.

In recent years, there have also been numerous reports of alleged use of torture and ill-treatment in detention to coerce detainees into becoming informants and incriminating others.