A Gülen Movement-linked former head of the Istanbul Police Security Branch office, Ertan Erçıktı, who was arrested in the Tahşiye operation last December for alleged involvement in establishing an armed terrorist organization and fabrication of crimes on behalf of a terrorist organization, has announced his deputy candidacy for nomination for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). "My client, the former Istanbul Police Security Branch office head, Ertan Erçıktı, became a candidate nominee for the CHP for Zonguldak province," Erçıktı's lawyer, Ömer Turanlı, said on Wednesday. Erçıktı's application came two weeks after another Gülen Movement-linked former police Chief Yurt Atayün, submitted his application to be a deputy candidate nominee for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Atayün, the former head of the Istanbul Police counterterrorism department, was dismissed from duty in early August of 2014 due to accusations of illegal espionage activities and was also accused of profiling officers in the police department based on their backgrounds and beliefs. Erçıktı was arrested in the Taşhiye operation on December 14, which started with legal complains from a religious group called Taşhiye whose members were imprisoned with false evidence and labeled as a terrorist group by Gülen Movement-linked police officers and prosecutors. The Turkish Criminal Court stated in late December that "the suspects established an illegal organization with a hierarchical structure that is separate from the state's own structure," adding that the accused aimed to "seize influential posts that govern Turkey's social, economic, military and administrative mechanisms."Regarding the Tahşiye case, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said that it is a good example of how the Gülen Movement uses its members in state intuitions to destroy its rivals. "The December 14 operation was not a media crackdown or the government's revenge against the Gülen Movement, it's a human rights struggle of a religious group that was targeted and victimized by the Gülen Movement for criticizing Fethullah Gülen's way of understanding religion," Davutoğlu said on December 24, 2014.