1/ Turkish police on Tuesday conducted a large-scale raid across 66 provinces, detaining 459 individuals for alleged links to the Hizmet religious movement.
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2/ Turkish prosecutors say the detainees promote the religious movement through social media, payphones, and the use of ByLock, a secure messaging app banned in Turkey.
3/ Turkish police consider mere phone calls made from payphones allegedly associated with the movement as grounds for detention, even without recorded conversations.
4/ President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime continues its crackdown despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declaring detentions based on the use of ByLock illegal, as the app’s usage does not constitute a crime.
5/ Turkish officials banned the Hizmet movement as a terrorist organization, blaming it for an alleged coup attempt in 2016. Since then, more than 700,000 individuals have been prosecuted for supposed links to the movement.
6/ Currently, at least 13,000 people remain in Turkish prisons, either in pre-trial detention or serving sentences for terrorism-related charges linked to Hizmet.
7/ The movement’s founder, Fethullah Gülen, passed away in the United States at the age of 83 on Oct. 20. This latest raid was the largest since his death.
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