The Turkish Interior Ministry has announced that it is offering TL 4 million reward for information that leads to the arrest of eight individuals who are allegedly linked to the faith-based Gülen movement, including Adil Öksüz, the prime suspect in a failed coup attempt on July 15.
The ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the names of 37 people who are wanted over their links to the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding the July 15 coup attempt, have been added to the country’s list of “most wanted terrorists.”
The list carries the names and details of hundreds of people from various terror organizations, ranking them in five color-coded categories from red (the most wanted) to blue, green, orange and grey.
The name of Öksüz along with seven others have been added to the red category. Any person providing information to Turkish authorities leading to the arrest of the people in the red category will be granted a reward of up to TL 4 million.
Öksüz is accused of being the head of the movement’s alleged network within the air force. He was briefly detained after the coup attempt.
The July 15 coup attempt killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, and the movement having denied the accusation, Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government launched a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
More than 110,000 people have been purged from state bodies, 82,000 detained and 35,000 arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors, housewives and even a comedian.
The government refers to Gülen movement as FETÖ, which stands for Fethullahist Terror Organization. Despite the fact that the government calls the movement as a terrorist organization, a high criminal court in Hatay province in early October rejected an indictment on alleged members of FETÖ, saying that there is no such terrorist organization officially identified.