Sixty out of 380 businesspeople for whom prosecutors issued detention warrants last week have been arrested on the grounds that they provided financial support to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The arrested businesspeople include the former executive board president of the Kayseri-based Boydak Holding, Mustafa Boydak, and his brother Bekir Boydak along with family member Mahmut Sami Boydak.
The investigation into the businesspeople across 35 provinces is being carried out by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that 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, whose views 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 135,000 people have been purged from state bodies, in excess of 90,000 detained and over 41,000 have been arrested since the coup attempt. Arrestees include journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academics, governors and even a comedian. Critics argue that lists of Gülen sympathizers were drawn up prior to the coup attempt.