Detention warrants were issued for 99 people in Ankara and Isparta provinces on Tuesday on accusations that they use a smart phone application known as ByLock, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
According to the report, warrants were issued for 59 people in 13 provinces by the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, accused by the Turkish government of mounting a coup attempt last summer.
Detention warrants were issued for 40 people by the Isparta Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of the investigation into the movement. Police detained 31, while nine people still remain at large.
In a similar development, nine teachers who had accounts at Bank Asya, which was seized by the government last year, were detained in the Bodrum district of Muğla province on Tuesday as part of the witch-hunt targeting the Gülen movement.
Turkish authorities believe that ByLock is a communication tool among followers of the faith-based Gülen movement.
Tens of thousands of people, including civil servants, police officers, soldiers, businessmen and housemakers, have either been dismissed or arrested for using ByLock since the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
A recent legal opinion published in London found that tens of thousands of Turkish citizens detained or dismissed from their jobs on the basis of downloading ByLock have had their human rights violated.
According to a report in The Guardian last week, a study commissioned by opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and conducted by a pair of 2 Bedford Row attorneys argues that the arrest of 75,000 suspects primarily because they downloaded the ByLock app is arbitrary and illegal.
According to the report by Guardian legal affairs correspondent Owen Bowcott, the legal opinion was commissioned by a pro-Gülen organization based in Europe. The two experienced British barristers, William Clegg QC and Simon Baker, drafted the opinion.
“The evidence that the [ByLock] app was used exclusively by those who were members or supporters of the Gülen movement [is] utterly unconvincing and unsupported by any evidence,” the two barristers said, according to the Guardian.
“There is a great deal of evidence … which demonstrates that the app was widely available and used in many different countries, some of which had no links to Turkey.”
The detention of people on this basis is “arbitrary and in breach of article 5” of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to liberty, the report says.
The report examines transcripts of recent trials of Gülen followers in Turkey as well as Turkish intelligence reports on ByLock. It concludes that the cases presented so far violate the ECHR, to which Turkey is a party.