Seven suspects of the Gülenist Terrorist Group’s (FETÖ) military and student structure have been arrested, authorities said on Wednesday.
The provincial police department's counterterrorism and intelligence division investigated FETÖ's covert military and student networks.
Warrants were issued for seven suspects found to be operating within the organization's secret structure. They communicated via operational lines used as a cellular network, made repeated calls from payphones and were linked to previously compromised imams. Their names appeared in Bank Asya account transactions and in messages from ByLock users.
Seven suspects were apprehended in simultaneous operations centered in Samsun and conducted in Ankara, Istanbul, Adana, Gaziantep, Şırnak and Sivas.
The suspects were taken into custody and taken to the police station.
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.
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.
