A special police team formed to find Adil Öksüz, the former theology lecturer whom Ankara later cast as a central figure in Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt, has been disbanded, according to a Habertürk report.
Members of the unit were reassigned to other duties, while officials said the search for Öksüz was continuing.
Öksüz became one of the most disputed figures in the official account of the coup attempt because the government and pro-government media portrayed him as evidence of Gülen movement involvement, despite the early judicial record showing that he was released after a court found insufficient evidence to keep him in custody.
Ankara designates the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, as a terrorist organization and blames it for Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt. The movement denies involvement in the coup or any terrorist activity.
Öksüz was among those detained near Akıncı Air Base outside Ankara on the morning of July 16, 2016. Prosecutors described the base as the command center of the coup attempt.
He was questioned by a prosecutor and later released under judicial supervision.
The prosecutor’s objection to the release was rejected on the grounds that there was no evidence warranting detention, according to reports from the period.
That decision later became a major point of controversy after Öksüz disappeared and the government began presenting him as one of the alleged civilian coordinators of the coup attempt.
The disbanding of the police unit raised new questions about the seriousness and direction of the search for a figure whose alleged role had become central to Ankara’s case against the movement.
Öksüz’s release also remained difficult to reconcile with the government’s later claims about his importance.
If he was the decisive link Ankara claimed he was, critics asked why the evidence was not strong enough to prevent his release immediately after he was detained near the base.
The report that the search team had been dissolved came as authorities continued to pursue thousands of soldiers, judges, teachers, police officers, civil servants and civilians over alleged Gülen movement links.
The Öksüz case stood apart because it was used to support the government’s broad narrative while also exposing one of that narrative’s weakest points: a man later described as central to the coup case had first passed through the justice system and been released.
