Maj. Murat Kalaç, who was on the wanted list of the Interior Ministry for his involvement in the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, was captured on Wednesday, security sources said.
Kalaç was on the run since the coup attempt, instigated by military officers linked to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), was quelled. Authorities earlier issued an arrest warrant for the suspect, who was stationed at the Gendarmerie General Command at the time of the coup attempt.
Authorities did not disclose where Kalaç was captured, but security sources said that the suspect had contacted someone to build a secret room in the location where he was captured, to avoid pursuit.
The major’s name came up in a case related to the coup attempt. An earlier indictment against Kalaç says he was a user of Bylock, an encrypted messaging app developed and exclusively used by FETÖ. He patrolled the gendarmerie headquarters on behalf of the putschists and refused to surrender to anti-putschist forces, locking himself in his room at the headquarters. He later managed to escape.
FETÖ thrived thanks to its widespread infiltration into key public institutions for decades. The terrorist group’s members managed to disguise themselves through secretive communication methods and by conspiring against those who detected their infiltration, through blackmail, sham trials organized by prosecutors linked to the group and other methods. Once he believed he had a sizable number of military infiltrators, the group’s leader, Fetullah Gülen, ordered them to stage another coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The coup attempt, this time carried out by military infiltrators of the group, spectacularly failed due to an unprecedented public resistance. Gülen died in 2024 before his expected extradition from the U.S., where he lived for years. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, Türkiye expanded its crackdown on the group.
