Turkish authorities have detained 237 individuals over the past two weeks in operations across 42 provinces targeting people accused of links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing the interior ministry.
The ministry said on X that 128 of the suspects have been arrested pending trial, while 61 were released under judicial supervision. Proceedings against the remaining suspects were reportedly continuing.
The operations were carried out in coordination with prosecutors, the police intelligence unit, anti-smuggling and organized crime units and the counterterrorism police, the ministry said.
Authorities accused the detainees of continuing to operate within the movement’s network, providing financial support to the movement and communicating via pay phone.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the attempted coup or any terrorist activity.
The so-called “payphone investigations” are based on call records. The prosecutors allege that a member of the Gülen movement used a single payphone to consecutively call all his contacts. Based on that assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call records, it is assumed that other numbers called right before or after the primary call also belong to people with Gülen links. The authorities do not possess the content of the calls in question. The supposition of guilt is solely based on the order of the calls made from the phone.
According to the latest figures from the justice ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted for alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.