Turkish authorities on Thursday detained 32 people in two separate operations across multiple provinces as part of an ongoing crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run TRT Haber reported.

In an operation led by the Malatya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, police detained 23 people in raids carried out in Malatya and 16 other provinces, including İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir.

The detainees were accused of engaging in activities linked to the Gülen movement.

In a separate operation overseen by the İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, police detained nine people who had been convicted of membership in a terrorist organization due to alleged links to the Gülen movement and had been released pending appeal.

Their convictions were based on the use of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim was used as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.

The detentions came despite a landmark 2023 ruling by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Turkey, which found that the use of ByLock did not in itself constitute a criminal offense and was insufficient to justify a terrorism conviction.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, 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 of 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.