On 18 August, Oktay Saral, chief adviser to President Erdoğan, wrote publicly to the Islamic preacher and government critic Alparslan Kuytul: “Your turn will come!” Kuytul had days earlier criticised police raids on the Süleymancılar, another religious community, and argued they were being punished for not backing the governing party.

The next morning counterterrorism police searched 49 locations across six provinces. Kuytul and his wife Semra were detained at their home in Adana. Their account states they were taken without being shown any detention order. Trustees were appointed to five companies. Access was blocked to 349 social media accounts.

Within three days the investigation had produced 62 detentions — including both of Kuytul’s lawyers. Bilal İpek was taken on the Wednesday, Alişan İnci on the Friday. A lawyer for other Furkan members says several of his clients were questioned without the lawyer of their choosing, on instructions attributed to the prosecutor.

DEM Party MP and human rights defender Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu called it a scandal: detentions carried out on instruction, and then the detainees’ own lawyers taken in.

Kuytul’s daughter reports that the movement’s magazine offices were searched twice — a second search the day after officers found nothing.

The Justice Minister says the case concerns criminal offences and proceeds of crime, not religious belief or opinion. The sequence is a matter of public record: criticism of a raid on one religious community, a public warning from the Presidency, raids the following morning, financial charges, trustees over the companies.