Turkish police detained 10 people on Friday over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement in raids across three provinces, the TRT Haber state broadcaster reported.
The simultaneous raids took place in İstanbul and the western provinces of Aydın and İzmir. Police alleged that some of those detained had previously held coordinating roles in the movement and had resumed those activities.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup or any terrorist activity.
The authorities also cited alleged past use of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app that was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, and increases in deposits at Bank Asya before its closure. They in addition named the alleged collection of donations on behalf of the movement and the organizing of religious discussion meetings.
Since the coup attempt in 2016, the Turkish government has accepted such activities as having an account at the now-shuttered Bank Asya, one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks at the time; using the ByLock messaging application; and subscribing to the now-shut-down Zaman daily or other publications affiliated with members of the movement as benchmarks for identifying and arresting alleged followers of the Gülen movement on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.
Turkish authorities have considered ByLock to be a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite a lack of evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
Although the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has in many cases made clear that use of the ByLock messaging app does not constitute a criminal offense, detentions and arrests of individuals continue in Turkey for their alleged use of the ByLock application.
Police said they seized Turkish lira, foreign currency and gold worth 12.85 million lira (about $257,000), along with digital materials and documents they described as related to the movement.
The detainees were taken to police headquarters. The reports did not identify them or include statements from their lawyers.
This article is republished from the Stockholm Center for Freedom.
