Ankara prosecutor’s office completes broad indictment against Gülenists

The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office has completed a major investigation into the Gülenists and opened a case against 73 suspects linked to the group. It claims the group completed its organizational formation in 2007 started identifying itself as the “sole de facto ruler of the state since Sept. 12, 2010.” 

In the indictment, the prosecutors detail the structural establishment of the group, its activities since its formation, the state institutions into which it has infiltrated, and its alleged crimes.  

The document claimed that the group, “runs de facto by Gülen … has a cadre system in the judiciary, the army, the police and the ministries,” tried to bring these institutions into its authority to transform them into its armed forces. “The establishment formed an unconditional [religious] communal sovereignty, organized vertically and in parallel to the state,” it added. 

The indictment also claimed that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) was the state institution into which the group has organized most comprehensively and where it has secured most authority. It said some of the group’s members “have mentioned civil war and military coups [by] relying on this structuring within the TSK.”     

Meanwhile, the indictment stated that Gülen sympathizer have “copied all memory data” accessed by the organization since 1995. “They hold all kinds of information and data of the state in their hands,” it claimed, including archives, saved confidential or non-confidential information related to state records, deeds, identities, schools, universities, hospitals, criminal records and intelligence.

The indictment also claimed that the Gülen movement, officially referred to by the state as the “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure (FETÖ/PDY),” is linked to a “superior mind” (üst akıl). 

“It is a product of foreign countries and a superior mind and structure. It would not be possible for the group to successfully carry out all this structuring without the support of foreign countries and several other organizations functioning inside Turkey,” it stated.

Regarding the group’s alleged relationship with the United States, where Gülen currently lives in exile, the document claims that Gülen “panicked” during the “post-modern coup” process that overthrew the Turkish government on Feb. 28, 1997. It claims that he stayed in the U.S. at the time and was in contact with the U.S. government and CIA officials, threatening groups standing against him in Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkish prosecutors have reportedly prepared a file seeking to extradite Gülen from the U.S. to Turkey. The Justice Ministry received the document on July 15. 

The extradition demand file includes Gülen’s identity information, charges against him, the dates and locations of his alleged crimes, the punishments foreseen for his alleged crimes, as well as his address in Pennsylvania.