Turkish security forces apprehended some 70 suspects with links to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in countrywide raids, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Friday.
Intelligence officers and organized crime units captured the suspects in an operation code-named “Clamp-11” conducted across 20 provinces, including Istanbul and Sakarya, as well as southern provinces of Muğla, Manisa, Mersin and the eastern Şanlıurfa and Elazığ provinces, Yerlikaya said on X.
The investigation uncovered that the suspects were directly involved with the terrorist group, Yerlikaya noted. They were sheltered in the so-called “gaybubet" ("absence") houses of FETÖ, used its encrypted communication app ‘ByLock’ and served in its “secret formations” in the military and police force.
"Absence" houses are used as safe houses by wanted FETÖ members who often forge IDs and rarely step out to avoid capture. A former member who testified to prosecutors said that the group's "absence" houses increased from 75 to 560 across Türkiye. Authorities believe that number might be even higher.
“They either convicts or wanted suspects named in ongoing FETÖ investigations and testimonies,” Yerlikaya said, adding that police seized a large number of digital materials during the raids.
Türkiye has marked FETÖ as a security threat since December 2013 when the terrorist group emerged as the perpetrator of two coup attempts disguised as graft probes.
Prosecutors have found the group’s infiltrators in law enforcement, the judiciary, bureaucracy and the military had waged a long-running campaign to topple the government. FETÖ is also implicated in a string of cases related to its alleged plots to imprison its critics, money laundering, fraud and forgery.
FETÖ has been under more intense scrutiny since the July 15, 2016, coup attempt its infiltrators in the army carried out, which left 251 people dead and thousands more injured.
Under a state of emergency following the attempt, tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested or dismissed from public sector jobs.
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.
The National Defense Ministry announced in 2022 that 24,387 Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) members were sacked since the coup attempt for possible ties to the group, while administrative inquiries are underway for over 700 others.
