Retired Colonel Dursun Çiçek, who was arrested as part of the Sledgehammer military coup plot trial and later released in June, has asserted in an interview with CNN Türk that the Gülen Movement, which is accused of infiltrating key government institutions in an alleged attempt to topple the government, has tried to infiltrate the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) for the last 35 to 40 years.

Describing the movement as a "plot organization," Çiçek, who announced his deputy candidate nomination for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), claimed that the movement had 10 percent influence in the Turkish Army.

"They worked 35 to 40 years to be potent in the Turkish Armed Forces, but they only managed to have influence in 10 percent. They need to work for nearly 35 more years to have full influence and only because they cannot take that risk, they targeted the TSK with plot cases," Çiçek claimed.

Çiçek accused the members of the Gülen Movement in the judiciary of copying his signature and submitting a "so-called evidence document" to prosecutors investigating the coup plot trial when he was released in June. According to the alleged Sledgehammer plan, the military was to systematically foment chaos in society through chilling acts of violence including bombing of mosques in Istanbul and downing a Turkish warplane over the Aegean.

Çiçek described the Gülen Movement's infiltration of the judiciary as a gang that acts like "triggermen" of the "parallel structure." He accused this structure of duplicating his signature in a document in 2009.

The Gülen Movement, led by Fethullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S., is considered a national threat by the government and is accused of infiltrating top state institutions, including the police and judiciary, and wiretapping thousands of people, including senior officials, journalists, actors, heads of nongovernmental organizations and others, with the alleged aim of toppling the government.