Mehmet Gelen, a Turkish schoolteacher in Azerbaijan, was reportedly abducted on Saturday by Turkish intelligence agents after questioning by a local prosecutor and was taken to Turkey within hours, according to the TR24 news website.
Gelen, a teacher at a Gülen movement-linked school in Azerbaijan, appeared before an Azerbaijani prosecutor on allegations of terrorism made by Turkey against sympathizers of the faith-based Gülen movement.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuses the movement of orchestrating a coup attempt in July 2016 and has labeled real and perceived followers as terrorists. The movement strongly denies it, but tens of thousands of people have been subject to persecution inside Turkey, and a number of Gülen sympathizers have already been abducted by Turkish intelligence abroad.
In this new abduction case, Gelen failed to exit the courthouse while his wife was waiting outside. She posted a video of those moments in which she asked people who had abducted her husband.
A few hours later, the pro-government media in Turkey reported that Gelen had been brought to the Ankara counterterrorism unit, confirmed by the Anadolu news agency.
Meanwhile, French news weekly L’Express ran a story about Turkey’s abductions of Gülen movement followers abroad, saying that so far its National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has abducted 80 people from 18 countries around the world.
The movement has a global education network and operates schools in over 150 countries around the world.