Turkish police on Tuesday detained 25 people in coordinated operations across six provinces as part of an ongoing crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish media reported.
The operation, led by İstanbul’s counterterrorism police in coordination with intelligence units, targeted locations in İstanbul as well as Aksaray, Antalya, Çanakkale, Bursa and Samsun.
The suspects were taken into custody on suspicion of continuing activities on behalf of the group. They were accused of allegedly recruiting new members through shared student housing and maintaining internal ties through individuals responsible for overseeing those residences.
Searches at the locations resulted in the seizure of digital materials, documents and banned publications, along with cash and gold worth about 1.14 million Turkish lira ($25,210), police said.
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 coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
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.