A Turkish court has jailed pending trial 24 employees of Işık Yayıncılık, a publishing house closed by government decree after Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, in an investigation targeting alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Police had detained 41 people in İstanbul and three other provinces as part of the investigation into the publishing house.
After police questioning, the detainees were referred to the Anadolu Courthouse in İstanbul’s Kartal district.
A judge ordered 24 of them jailed pending trial.
Thirteen others were released under judicial control, while four were released pending trial without additional restrictions.
Işık Yayıncılık was among the media, publishing, education and civil society institutions shut down during Turkey’s post-coup state of emergency over alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Ankara designates the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, as a terrorist organization and blames it for the coup attempt. The movement denies any involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The case formed part of a broader crackdown in which employees of closed companies, schools, media outlets and charities were detained or prosecuted on the basis of alleged institutional ties rather than accusations of direct involvement in the coup attempt.
The detention of publishing house employees drew attention to the breadth of the post-coup prosecutions, which extended beyond soldiers, police officers and civil servants to writers, editors, teachers, businesspeople and administrative staff at institutions accused by the government of links to the movement.
