As part of an ongoing purge in Turkey, detention warrants were issued on Wednesday for 52 dismissed members of the country’s Supreme Court of Appeals, with 26 of them detained in Ankara the same day.
The jurists had already been purged by decrees issued under a state of emergency that has been in effect in Turkey since a failed coup on July 15.
Pro-government media outlets reported that the former Supreme Court of Appeals members were accused of links to the Gülen movement for allegedly using a smart phone application named ByLock.
Use of ByLock is considered evidence by the Turkish government of involvement in the coup, although no conversations to that effect have yet been discovered. The government argues that ByLock is a secret messaging application among sympathizers of the Gülen movement.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government have been accusing the movement of masterminding the coup despite conflicting reports. A European Union intelligence report last week stated that Erdoğan’s claims are unsubstantiated.
Turkey has jailed over 40,000 people over coup allegations in pre-trial detention and dismissed nearly 140,000 people from state institutions in the post-coup purge.