Turkish authorities have detained 75 people over the last four days in two separate investigations targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing Turkish media.
On November 4 the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office announced that detention warrants had been issued for 19 suspects for alleged links to the movement. The suspects were identified through encrypted communications recovered from the digital devices of a previously detained individual. Authorities said the messages were sent via the encrypted Signal app.
Among those targeted were employees of prominent state-linked institutions, including the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), the country's leading scientific research agency; ASELSAN, a state-owned defense electronics company; the Turkish Energy, Nuclear and Mineral Research Agency, which oversees energy and nuclear research; and Türk Telekom, Turkey's main telecommunications provider.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting 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.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement's members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
On November 1 Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced that 56 people had been detained in nationwide operations spanning 31 provinces. Fifty of those suspects were arrested, while three were released under judicial supervision. Investigations into the remaining individuals are ongoing.
Authorities allege that the suspects were part of the movement's active network, using payphones to communicate with senior members, financing affiliated groups and sharing movement's propaganda on social media.
The so-called "payphone investigations" are based on call records. The prosecutors assume that a member of the Gülen movement used the same payphone to call all his contacts consecutively. Based on that assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call records, it is assumed that the other numbers called right before or after that call also belong to people with Gülen links.
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.