Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Tuesday that 459 suspects linked to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) were captured in operations in 66 provinces.
Raids were the latest chapter in the long-running “Operation Clamp” against the group, which sought to seize power on July 15, 2016, through a foiled coup bid by its military infiltrators.
Yerlikaya said there was no respite to their fight against a “treacherous terrorist group after the death of its ringleader.” FETÖ leader Fetullah Gülen died at the age of 83 in October in Pennsylvania, United States, where he lived for years. “We will fight until we wipe out this treacherous network that tried to crush our national will,” Yerlikaya said in a social media post regarding the operations.
Captured suspects were mostly those residing in so-called “gaybubet” (absence) houses. Those safe houses thrived after the 2016 coup attempt that forced a large number of FETÖ members to go into hiding in Türkiye or flee the country for safe havens in Europe and the U.S. Suspects were members of the terrorist group’s network in the country still active despite a string of crackdowns by security forces. Some were in charge of financing the group’s activities and recruiting students to the group, while others were part of secret networks in the military, law enforcement and judiciary. The terrorist group, which posed as a religious movement, has been known for its widespread infiltration into law enforcement, the army and bureaucracy in general for decades.
The minister said suspects were also involved in terrorist group’s propaganda on social media and had been in touch with each other through public payphones, a method commonly employed by FETÖ to avoid detection. They also utilized Bylock, an encrypted messaging app developed and exclusively used by FETÖ members.
Operations also targeted suspects who were aided by fellow FETÖ members for infiltration into public agencies through fraud. FETÖ was implicated in a series of investigations into fraud in exams for admission to the public sector. Investigations discovered that interviewers linked to the group favored interviewees the group sought to hire in public agencies in a massive infiltration scheme covering everything from police to military promotion and school exams.
FETÖ still has backers in army ranks and civil institutions, but they disguised their loyalty, as operations and investigations have indicated since the 2016 coup attempt. FETÖ is also implicated in a string of cases related to its alleged plots to imprison its critics, money laundering, fraud and forgery.
The group faced increased scrutiny following the coup attempt that killed 251 people and injured nearly 2,200 others. Tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested or dismissed from public sector jobs following the effort under a state of emergency.
Hundreds of investigations launched after the attempt sped up the collapse of the group’s far-reaching network in the country. FETÖ was already under the spotlight following two separate attempts to overthrow the government in 2013 through its infiltrators.
The terrorist group faces operations almost daily as investigators still try to unravel their massive network of infiltrators everywhere. In 2024 alone, police apprehended hundreds of FETÖ suspects across the country, including fugitives on western borders trying to flee to Europe.
Those apprehended were mostly low-ranking members of the group, as high-ranking members managed to flee the country before and immediately after the coup attempt. Still, security forces occasionally capture key figures of the group who managed to remain in hiding, such as Cihat Yıldız. Yıldız, accused of helping the escape of Adil Öksüz, the civilian mastermind of the 2016 coup attempt, was captured during a police check in August in Istanbul.
