Gendarmerie and police officers rounded up 15 suspects in operations against the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) on Tuesday.
The arrests stem from an investigation by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in the western city of Izmir where the group’s leader Fetullah Gülen rose to prominence as a preacher decades ago.
Operations were carried out in 12 provinces and netted seven active-duty military officers, one retired officer, a civil servant and six former military school cadets.
FETÖ still has backers in army ranks and civil institutions, but they managed to disguise their loyalty, as operations and investigations since the 2016 coup attempt have indicated. 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 by FETÖ’s infiltrators in the army 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 are 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 last month in Istanbul. Media outlets reported on Tuesday that a lawsuit was filed against Yıldız, and he faces 15 years in prison on charges of running a criminal organization.
