Turkey’s long-running campaign against the Gülen movement has entered a new and alarming phase. Erdoğan’s government, which has already dismantled the movement domestically following the staged 2016 coup attempt, is now targeting Gülenists—especially those in exile—using a combination of psychological warfare, surveillance, disinformation, and even physical attacks abroad.
In April 2025, we published a detailed series of social media posts warning of a covert operation unfolding in real time: a psychological campaign by the Erdoğan regime to fracture the Gülen movement from within using former affiliates—academics, journalists, and exiled influencers.
What began as an analytical thread on our platform has since been borne out by events on the ground. The Turkish state has visibly escalated its efforts to co-opt dissidents, manipulate perception, and potentially even stage violence to achieve broader strategic goals—including framing the Gülen movement as an “international terrorist organization.”
Since our initial post, the strategy has evolved. It began with former Gülenist academic Gökhan Bacık, whose controversial proposal that the movement “dissolve itself”—mirroring the PKK’s staged demobilization rhetoric—was later endorsed by Mümtaz’er Türköne, another former insider turned regime-aligned critic. The messaging has since grown louder and more coordinated, with politicized narratives spread by individuals once considered trusted figures within the movement. One prominent example is Dönmez himself, who initially sought asylum in Sweden before relocating to the U.S., where he has continued to produce content that many now view as aligned with the Turkish government’s interests.
This divide-and-coopt approach – from false friends offering help to brutal assaults in foreign streets – marks a chilling new chapter in Erdoğan’s war on the network of his onetime ally, Fethullah Gülen.This divide-and-coopt approach—using insiders to manufacture doubt and disarray—represents a new phase in Erdoğan’s decade-long crackdown on the Gülenists. It is more psychological than legal, more informational than judicial.
From Corruption Scandal to Coup Crackdown
The feud between Erdoğan and the Gülen movement burst into public view in December 2013, when corruption investigations implicating Erdoğan’s inner circle triggered a political earthquake. Almost overnight, Erdoğan cast the probes as a “judicial coup” by Gülenist conspirators within the state. He purged thousands of police officers and prosecutors, calling the movement a “parallel state” even as Gülen denied orchestrating the charges. Tensions simmered until July 15, 2016, when a faction within the military attempted a coup. Erdoğan immediately blamed the insurrection on Gülen’s followers, dubbing them “FETÖ” (Fethullahist Terrorist Organization), and unleashed an unprecedented crackdown. In the ensuing purge, more than 130,000 people were expelled from government jobs by decree – judges, teachers, soldiers, academics – and hundreds of thousands faced criminal investigation for alleged Gülenist ties. Independent media like Zaman newspaper, affiliated with the movement, were shut down and their staff prosecuted on terrorism charges.
Having uprooted Gülenists from Turkey’s state and society, Erdoğan’s government turned its attention abroad. Over the past decade, it has treated the Turkish diaspora as a battleground to hunt “traitors” beyond its borders. Turkish intelligence (MIT) has orchestrated the abduction of dozens of alleged Gülen followers from countries in the Balkans, Asia, and Africa, often by bribing local officials. In Western nations, Turkish operatives have conducted aggressive surveillance and harassment campaigns against exiled dissidents.
From Mass Purges to Divide-and-Coopt
As outright purges give way to a protracted struggle against a now mostly exiled movement, Erdoğan has adopted a more devious playbook. Rather than relying solely on mass arrests or blanket repression, the new strategy is to fracture the Gülen movement from within and co-opt its members. Turkish intelligence has been recruiting informants and turncoats from among the very people it once ostracized. According to several investigative reports, MIT agents have approached Gülen-affiliated individuals abroad – often those living in exile under fear of arrest – with offers that are hard to refuse. Some are promised financial rewards, protection for relatives in Turkey, or even the dropping of charges in exchange for spying on fellow Gülenists. Others face veiled threats: if they do not cooperate, their families back home might face travel bans, asset seizures, or trumped-up prosecutions. In one recorded case, an MIT operative told an exiled Gülenist that he could safely visit family again if he agreed to inform on the diaspora community.
Erdoğan’s government is waging an “information warfare” campaign to break the Gülenists’ morale and unity without firing a single shot. Pro-government media frequently tout the “confessions” or testimonies of former Gülenists who have purportedly seen the error of their ways – often narratives extracted under duress or offered by opportunists seeking favor. By publicizing (and sometimes staging) the defections of ex-members, the regime bolsters its claim that the movement is imploding and untrustworthy.
The Bacık Proposal: Calling for Self-Dissolution
This campaign reached a crescendo in late May 2025 when a former Gülen-affiliated academic made a jarring public proposal. Dr. Gökhan Bacık, a political science professor who was once close to the movement, published an op-ed suggesting that the Gülen movement should voluntarily “dissolve” itself – effectively disband and cease all organized activities. Bacık drew an explicit parallel to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK): just as the Turkish state at one point pursued the disarmament and disbandment of the PKK, he argued, a similar negotiated formula could be applied to “the Cemaat,” as Gülen’s Hizmet movement is often called. In Bacık’s view, this was a roadmap to end the suffering of the movement’s members: by formally winding up the organization, renouncing any infrastructure, and perhaps ceding to Ankara’s demands, Gülen-affiliated individuals might escape collective persecution.
The timing and framing of Bacık’s proposal raised many eyebrows. It came just weeks after our social media exposé. To movement supporters, Bacık’s suggestion sounded like the very narrative Ankara had long sought: an admission of defeat and guilt. Indeed, Turkish pro-government media immediately seized on Bacık’s op-ed as vindication – evidence that even an ex-Gülenist intellectual sees the movement as a spent force akin to a terror group surrendering. Within the Gülenist diaspora, Bacık’s article “dropped like a bomb”; as Mümtaz’er Türköne later noted, it garnered over 300,000 views and hundreds of fiery comments, the vast majority condemning the idea and insisting “the Cemaat is not a terrorist organization” that needs dissolving. For adherents, the comparison to the armed PKK was deeply offensive – conflating a pacifist civil society network with a violent insurgency, thereby tacitly accepting the Turkish state’s terrorist label on the movement.
Crucially, Bacık’s proposal did not emerge in a vacuum; it was almost immediately legitimized from within by another prominent former academic (political scientist) and Zaman columnist. Mümtaz’er Türköne himself weighed in with a commentary analyzing Bacık’s self-dissolution roadmap. In a piece titled “If the Cemaat dissolves itself…”, Türköne praised Bacık’s essay as one of the most thought-provoking contributions in recent times. He defended Bacık as a sincere intellectual raising a difficult idea (not a government shill, in Türköne’s portrayal), and he engaged with the proposal’s merits. Tellingly, Türköne acknowledged that if the movement disbanded, it would indeed serve the interests of “the state” (devlet) – suggesting that Ankara would welcome such an outcome – though he mused that it might not actually benefit “the government” of the day. This nuanced distinction was read by some as Türköne’s attempt to maintain credibility: he essentially admitted that Bacık’s plan aligns with state desires (and by extension, propaganda), even as he tried to frame it as a good-faith solution to help Gülen’s followers escape persecution.
From the perspective of the Turkish regime, the Bacık–Türköne one-two punch was a propaganda triumph. These two former insiders were publicly advocating, through both written and video mediums on a platform owned by longstanding anti-Gülenist Ruşen Çakır, for what essentially amounted to the movement’s surrender. Ankara’s narrative architects could not have crafted it better: the message was that “reasonable ex-Gülenists” see the movement as a liability and want it gone, implicitly validating the state’s claim that it is a dangerous entity best erased. On Turkish airwaves and troll-infested corners of social media, Bacık’s words were trumpeted as a crack in the Gülenists’ armor. The episode illustrates how Erdoğan’s divide-and-coopt strategy leverages the voices of former Gülenists themselves to advance its goals. By coopting figures like Bacık (wittingly or unwittingly), the regime gains a double advantage – demoralizing the movement from inside and bolstering its propaganda outside.
Ahmet Dönmez: A Gülenist Turned Critic — or Tool of Confusion?
Another central figure in this unfolding drama is Ahmet Dönmez, a former reporter for Turkey’s Zaman newspaper, who initially sought asylum in Sweden on the basis of Gülenist affiliation before relocating to the US last year. Since his departure from Turkey, he has been producing YouTube videos and writing highly politicized reports aligned with the narratives and goals of the Turkish government. While some within the movement appear to take his commentary at face value—thereby increasing his visibility—many Gülenists regard him with deep skepticism. They believe his work and activities are carefully orchestrated by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) as part of a broader strategy to infiltrate, manipulate, and discredit the movement from within.
In March 2022, Dönmez was driving his 6-year-old daughter home from school in a suburb of Stockholm when another vehicle collided with his car from behind. When he stepped out to inspect the damage, he was ambushed by two attackers who brutally beat him, causing severe head trauma. He narrowly escaped death after spending three weeks in intensive care. Swedish authorities were urged to investigate whether this attack was a targeted reprisal for his journalistic work.
Almost immediately, competing narratives emerged. Many of Dönmez’s colleagues and supporters suspected the attack was orchestrated by individuals linked to the Turkish state or its allied underworld figures—after all, Dönmez had recently received explicit death threats from an Ankara crime boss for exposing alleged ties between Turkey’s former interior minister – Suleyman Soylu- and organized crime. Yet pro-Erdoğan media circles spun a very different story: they claimed the perpetrators were not agents of Ankara at all but rather members of the Gülen movement itself – the very community from which Dönmez hails. In their telling, Dönmez was attacked by his own fellow Gülenists as part of an internal feud, a narrative seemingly aimed at discrediting the Gülen movement as violent and divided.
In Turkey’s pro-government media, a coordinated narrative took shape, accusing Fethullah Gülen’s followers of attacking Dönmez as an act of internal score-settling. On March 21, 2022 (just two days after the beating), columnist Cem Küçük wrote a piece in the mainstream Türkiye newspaper claiming that “FETÖ” members themselves had Dönmez beaten due to an internal conflict. Küçük is a well-known pro-Erdoğan propagandist, and his column advanced a conspiratorial scenario: that Dönmez’s recent revelations had angered factions within the Gülen movement, prompting them to eliminate him. “Of course, even if the attack is linked to a mafia group, one must look inside FETÖ,” Küçük argued, asserting that the movement had a history of ruthlessness. He reminded readers that “the FETÖ traitors rained bullets on the people on July 15 [2016] and killed [academic] Necip Hablemitoğlu,” and thus “[FETÖ] would have Ahmet Dönmez beaten up and even killed… Because that is what FETÖ is”. In other words, a pro-government pundit flatly told the Turkish public that Gülenists beating or murdering one of their own was not only plausible but expected. This message was amplified across partisan TV segments and social media, framing Dönmez as a victim of an alleged Gülenist power struggle rather than a critic of the regime.
In one instance, Cem Küçük, a propagandist for the Turkish government, publicly called for the assassination of a journalist during a television program. He revealed that the Turkish authorities were aware of his home address in Stockholm and demanded the “extermination” of the journalist.
After surviving the Stockholm attack, Ahmet Dönmez’s rhetoric took a dramatic turn—one that increasingly mirrored the strategic aims of the very regime that had once targeted him. From his new base in the United States, Dönmez shifted focus from exposing Ankara’s crimes to systematically critiquing the Gülen movement. In a stream of articles and YouTube broadcasts, he revisited the 2016 coup attempt with pointed revisionism, questioned the decisions of exiled leaders, and fixated on the emotional breakdown of ordinary followers.
Though presented as independent reflection, the effect of Dönmez’s commentary has been unmistakable: deepening divisions, eroding morale, and casting a shadow of doubt over a community already under siege. Increasingly, his narratives seem less like dissent and more like disruption—uncannily aligned with the long-term psychological operations pursued by Turkish intelligence. Many in the diaspora now believe that Dönmez, whether knowingly complicit or subtly co-opted, has become a conduit for MİT’s agenda: to fracture the movement from within, discredit its leadership, and sow distrust among its members. In this light, he appears less a journalist in exile and more a sophisticated tool of state-sponsored confusion.
In one instance, Dönmez publicized the idea that insiders — rather than MİT — were responsible for compiling certain “lists” (presumably of Gülenist operatives or assets), effectively directing blame inward at the movement’s own members. The end result is a toxic atmosphere of mutual suspicion among movement members, precisely what Ankara would desire. Ironically, Dönmez’s ‘courageous truth-telling’ — once directed solely at the Turkish state — has been repurposed in part to fracture his own community’s unity.
Operation Ricerca: Psychological Operations Under an Academic Mask
Perhaps the most striking example of this divide-and-coopt strategy is the recently exposed “Operation Ricerca.” It was recently revealed that a clandestine MIT scheme was designed to ensnare exiled members of the Gülen movement under the false pretense of academic research. The operation revolved around a UK-registered front company called Ricerca Research & Consultancy Co., which presented itself as a bona fide research organization. Operatives behind Ricerca – in reality MIT agents – adopted fake identities on social media, even speaking in Gülenists’ own community jargon to appear credible. Posing as sympathetic researchers, they targeted purged academics (known as KHK’lılar) who had lost their jobs in Turkey’s post-coup purge and were struggling abroad.
Behind this friendly façade, Operation Ricerca was nothing less than a sophisticated intelligence trap. The fake Ricerca project systematically mined exiled Gülenists for sensitive information. Participants were unwittingly providing details about the movement’s leadership structure, its international contacts, its financial networks, and its organizational presence in countries like Germany. All of this data was fed back to Ankara. The operation, which ran for over a year, did more than gather intel – it also aimed to poison the well of trust. The fallout has been profound: once the ruse was revealed, many exiled scholars were left feeling betrayed and paranoid, unsure if former colleagues who invited them into the “research” were in on the hoax. “Ricerca” has thus become synonymous with a new kind of hybrid warfare – one that blends espionage, social engineering and psychological manipulation, all under the innocuous cover of academia.
The Global Front: Surveillance, Disinformation and Attacks
Erdoğan’s war on Gülenists no longer recognizes any borders. While covert operations like Ricerca unfold in the shadows, more overt forms of transnational repression have already escalated. Turkish embassies and consulates act as forward operating bases for intelligence gathering on diaspora communities. Leaked documents show that Turkish diplomats in countries from Washington to Brussels routinely spy on critics and dissidents, compiling reports on local Gülenist activities to send back to Ankara. At times, Turkish operatives have masqueraded as journalists or businessmen to get close to targets abroad. In one dramatic example, MIT agents secretly monitored attendees at Fethullah Gülen’s funeral in New Jersey in 2024—going so far as to film the crowd of 20,000 mourners and identify individual participants. Shortly thereafter, Turkish authorities initiated background investigations and legal actions against those who were spotted paying respects to the deceased cleric. Simply mourning the movement’s inspirer was enough to risk being branded a terrorist or having one’s family in Turkey punished.
Meanwhile, Erdoğan’s propaganda apparatus works overtime to demonize Gülenists on the world stage. Online, an army of pro-regime trolls and bots spread disinformation, painting the movement’s members as spies, traitors, or puppets of foreign powers. The Turkish state has sought to flood social media with its narrative, even as it censors dissenting voices at home. This virtual assault coincides with real-life intimidation. In Europe and North America, exiled Turkish journalists and activists have faced stalking and threats, and in some cases, violent attacks, such as that experienced by Ahmet Donmez.
Even beyond Europe, no critic appears out of reach. In the United States, Turkish agents and their proxies have plotted to kidnap or surveil Erdoğan’s opponents – from schemes to snatch Gülen himself from his Pennsylvania compound, to the indictment of a Turkish businessman in 2018 for covertly lobbying to extradite Gülen by illegal means. Several countries have begun pushing back against such operations: courts in Germany, Switzerland and Kosovo have charged or expelled Turkish spies caught hunting dissidents on their soil. Yet Ankara remains undeterred. Erdoğan publicly declares he will “hunt terrorists wherever they are,” and under this pretext, more Turkish operatives have been dispatched overseas under diplomatic or commercial cover.
False-Flag Fears: Could Ankara Target Its Gülenists Turned Critics?
As Turkey intensifies its efforts to demonize the Gülen movement, a disturbing question looms: How far will its tactics extend? We have been warned by our sources that Ankara might resort to drastic measures, even staging violence against its own exiled critics, to paint the Gülenists as global terrorists.
There are growing fears that MİT could stage a sensational false-flag operation overseas, believing the potential benefits, such as further discrediting the movement, outweigh the risks. One alarming possibility is that Turkish intelligence might assassinate Ahmet Dönmez in the United States and then, through its media outlets, blame the murder on Gülenist infighting. This scenario, while reminiscent of a spy thriller, is disturbingly plausible given the regime’s track record. Erdogan’s government has repeatedly tried to link the Gülen movement to violent acts it did not commit. In addition to blaming Gülenists for the 2016 killing of the Russian ambassador, Turkish officials have made outlandish claims, such as accusing Gülen supporters of shooting down a Russian jet in 2015 or orchestrating political assassinations domestically. Fabricating evidence to implicate the movement is a staple tactic in Erdogan’s playbook.
Fethullah Gülen himself, now in his 80s, presciently warned years ago that Erdoğan’s circle might “assassinate a few important people…and then turn and blame it on Hizmet [the movement]” in order to galvanize public opinion against his followers. In 2017, Gülen spoke of “dark power circles” around the Turkish government preparing just such plans.
The Final Trap: Co-optation or Elimination
In conclusion, the Gülenists’ main struggle today is about more than just surviving Erdoğan’s crackdown; it is about preserving an emancipatory narrative in the face of a tyrant’s distortion. Several ex-Gülenist public figures now echo talking points that would please Turkey’s rulers. Some had early ideological shifts under pressure; others are recent turncoats or collaborators.
This strategy operates on both “stick” and “carrot” principles. On one hand, MİT’s long arm continues to intimidate: dissidents abroad face surveillance and physical and verbal harassment and even assassinations. On the other hand, Ankara also dangles inducements: promises of clemency, financial reward, or professional rehabilitation for those who publicly recant or denounce the movement.
The most concerning aspect of this government strategy is the possibility that some former Gülenists—who are now openly critical of the movement—could be targeted for elimination not despite their dissent, but because of it. The Turkish state might orchestrate attacks or assassinations against these individuals and then falsely attribute the violence to the Gülen movement itself. By doing this, Ankara could create the conditions necessary to push for the international criminalization of the Gülen community—including labelling it as a ‘terrorist’ organization—under completely fabricated pretenses, if the movement refuses to submit to its demands and serve as a political tool both in Turkey and abroad.
