Turkey Targets Major Religious Group With Organised Crime Charges

Ankara Court House. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Justinianus. Turkish police detained Alihan Kuris, leader of one of Turkey’s largest religious groups, known as the “Suleymancilar,” and 48 others on Thursday as part of an investigation into an alleged organised crime group. The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said detention warrants had been issued for Kuris and 48 other suspects as part of an investigation into alleged offences. They include establishing and managing a criminal organisation, membership of a criminal organisation, laundering proceeds of crime, fraud against public institutions and violations of tax law. “The criminal organisation sought through this method to prevent access to company records and make it more difficult to trace financial transactions,” the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. It said a report by Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board, MASAK, found that many companies linked to the suspects had recorded significant increases in financial transactions and purchases and sales since 2020. Prosecutors alleged that a number of the companies subsequently underwent divisions and transfers, while new companies were established with large amounts of capital, sometimes in different provinces and operating in sectors unrelated to the original companies. The investigation targets one of Turkey’s largest religious communities. The so-called Suleymancilar are inspired by Turkish imam and preacher Suleyman Hilmi Tunahan, who was originally from Bulgaria and died in 1959. The group’s main focus is Koranic education and it runs thousands of dormitories, cultural centres and other facilities in Turkey and abroad, particularly in Germany. The group opened a part of its new headquarters in Cologne in recent weeks with some financial support from the German government. Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said Kuris, Tunahan’s maternal great-grandson. took over the movement in 2016, after which its activities began to be conducted with greater secrecy. “They are building a large centre in Cologne, Germany. We assess that once this building is completed, all of their activities will be moved there,” Ciftci said, describing Thursday’s operation as one targeting the organisation’s financial network. The group is also known for its political and business activities. It controls an extensive network of companies and business interests, amounting to a sizeable business empire with activities spanning construction, food production and publishing, among others. Former group leader Arif Ahmet Denizolgun was Turkey’s transport minister in the 1990s, as a member of the centre-right Motherland Party. His nephew, Arif Ahmet Denizolgun, was an MP for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, from 2018 to 2023. Denizolgun is at odds with Kuris’s leadership. The group has never enjoyed particularly close relations with Erdogan’s AKP, however, as it has traditionally opted to support centrist parties rather than political Islamist parties. Following the failed coup attempt in 2016 and the subsequent crackdown on the so-called Gulen movement, which the Turkish authorities accused of orchestrating the coup attempt, some Islamist circles urged action against the Suleymancilar. In Turkey’s 2023 general election and 2024 local elections, the group reportedly supported opposition parties against Erdogan’s ruling alliance.