Some 154 suspects of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) were detained in operations across 50 provinces, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Tuesday.
Yerlikaya wrote on social media that the operations were carried out in 50 provinces, including Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, through the coordination between public prosecutor’s offices, counterterrorism, organized crime and intelligence departments of the police force.
The minister said that 286 suspects were caught during the operations, which lasted one month, and that 154 of them were detained while judicial control provisions are being applied to 79 of them.
The terrorist group orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in Türkiye, in which 252 people were killed and 2,734 were wounded. Ankara also accuses FETÖ of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.
“The suspects were sought for operating within the terrorist organization's 'current structure, financial structure, military secret structure and secret structure,' being users of the organization's encrypted communication program ByLock and communicating with authorized individuals within the organization through pay phones,” Yerlikaya said.
Türkiye has targeted its active members and sleeper cells nonstop and its influence has been much reduced since 2016. However, the group maintains a vast network, including infiltrators suspected to be still operating within Turkish institutions.
FETÖ backers in army ranks and civil institutions have disguised their loyalty, as operations and investigations have indicated since the 2016 coup attempt. FETÖ is also implicated in a string of cases related to its alleged plots to imprison its critics, money laundering, fraud and forgery.
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.
