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Sixty-four out of 91 Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) suspects arrested were detained in operations carried out in 30 provinces over the past two weeks, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Friday.
The minister wrote on social media that the operations were conducted in coordination with the public prosecutor’s offices, the counterterrorism department of the gendarmerie force, as well as provincial gendarmerie commands.
In this context, he shared that 64 of the 91 suspects were arrested during operations conducted by the gendarmerie in 30 provinces. Judicial control measures were applied to three of them, and procedures for the rest are ongoing.
“It was determined that the suspects were operating within the terrorist organization’s current structure, communicating with responsible individuals through payphones, providing financing, and promoting FETÖ propaganda on their social media accounts. Our prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into them,” he added.
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.
Those apprehended were mostly low-ranking members of the group, as high-ranking members managed to flee the country before and immediately after the coup attempt.
Still, security forces occasionally capture key figures of the group who managed to remain in hiding, such as Cihat Yıldız. Yıldız, accused of helping the escape of Adil Öksüz, the civilian mastermind of the 2016 coup attempt, was captured during a police check in August in Istanbul.
Turkish security sources also say the group is in turmoil after the death of its leader, Fetullah Gülen, in October last year.
