Ahmet Şık, a journalist who was allegedly jailed by judicial officials linked to the shadowy Gülen Movement for writing books about the threat posed by Gülenists, has said he is a victim of a conspiracy. Şık underscored that he was arrested for decoding the activities of the Gülen movement. Speaking live at a question and answer session on the Habertürk news channel, Şık said he became a target of the movement – which is notorious for conducting operations by using its alleged power in the judiciary and police – after he wrote about how the group was organized in the book. "The period during which I was arrested was when the Gülenists were the most powerful. They could arrest whomever they targeted. My book, which was due to be published, was not saying anything new about the Gülen Movement, but I received a tip from a source of mine saying that Turkey's intelligence service (MİT) had prepared a report on the digital archive of the movement and that I could be given access to that information," Şık was quoted as saying. Şık noted that the Gülenists, who happened to learn that he was about to include that information in his book, conspired against him before he could make the information public.
Şık and three other journalists were incarcerated in the Oda TV trial, launched as part of the Ergenekon investigation into an attempted coup against the government in 2012. Four journalists implicated in the case were released following the 11th hearing of the Oda TV trial, by Istanbul's 16th High Criminal Court. Şık's arrest came after he wrote a book on the Gülen Movement and its structure within in state institutions, raising concerns that Gülenist infiltrators in the judiciary made the charges and tried the suspects.
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