{"id":157121,"date":"2026-09-01T15:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/157121\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T15:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:38:12","slug":"turkey-detains-10-in-gulen-probe-citing-signal-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/157121\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey detains 10 in G\u00fclen probe, citing Signal activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turkish police on Tuesday detained 10 people accused of links to the faith-based G\u00fclen movement in an investigation by Ankara prosecutors into alleged activity conducted through Signal, a global encrypted messaging app.<\/p>\n

Detention warrants were issued for 13 people, three of whom police were in the process of searching for, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office said. Turkey\u2019s National Intelligence Organization (M\u0130T) and the counterterrorism branch of the Ankara Police Department coordinated the operation.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has targeted followers of the G\u00fclen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah G\u00fclen, 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 G\u00fclenist conspiracy and 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 G\u00fclen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the 13 were identified during work intended to uncover alleged movement activity conducted through Signal and contended that they were part of the movement\u2019s \u201ccurrent information technology structure.\u201d The wording suggests investigators obtained Signal communications or other information that helped identify the 13 people, but it does not explain whether they accessed message content or how any material was obtained. The statement also does not disclose the alleged messages, the conduct attributed to each person or the criminal provision cited in the warrants.<\/p>\n

The state-run Anadolu news agency described Signal as \u201cthe organization\u2019s encrypted messaging program,\u201d while the pro-government media claimed a movement Signal network had been deciphered, although the prosecutor\u2019s statement does not say investigators broke the service\u2019s encryption.<\/p>\n

Signal is a general-purpose messaging service operated by an independent US nonprofit and\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0by millions of people around the world, among them journalists, activists, government officials and ordinary users.<\/p>\n

The service uses end-to-end encryption, which is designed to prevent Signal itself or anyone intercepting communications in transit from reading their content. Investigators can nevertheless obtain messages from a seized or unlocked phone, a linked computer or another participant\u2019s device without breaking Signal\u2019s encryption. Signal use is not illegal in Turkey, and the statement does not establish whether installing or using the app resulted in the detention orders.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a02021 case\u00a0prosecutors cited Metin Can Y\u0131lmaz\u2019s installation of Signal as evidence of alleged movement links, prompting him to file a complaint against Elon Musk because the technology entrepreneur had recommended the app; prosecutors dismissed it on the grounds that using Signal was not a crime. In another Ankara investigation in\u00a0November 2025\u00a0prosecutors issued detention warrants for 19 people after Signal messages were allegedly recovered from the digital devices of a person detained earlier.<\/p>\n

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has\u00a0faulted Turkey<\/a>\u00a0for treating the use of ByLock, another encrypted messaging app, as conclusive proof of terrorist organization membership without assessing the evidence against each defendant.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0Turkish Minute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkish police on Tuesday detained 10 people accused of links to the faith-based G\u00fclen movement in an investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[83],"tags":[422,423,425,426,311,312,427,428,429,431,25755,131,132,155],"class_list":["post-157121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-stockholm","tag-ak-party","tag-akp","tag-democracy","tag-erdogan","tag-gulen-movement","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-oppression","tag-rule-of-law","tag-signal","tag-stockholm","tag-sweden","tag-turkey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117196535198188388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}