President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, during his recent visit to the three southeast African countries of Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique, warned his counterparts over the threat posed by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). As a cult that has significant presence in 170 countries around the world, Africa has become one of its main centers of activity, exploiting the continent as a source of funds and recruits under the guise of charity. One of the recently revealed facts about Gülenists' love of Africa is that its supposed philanthropy is based neither on compassion nor the desire to provide education to the disadvantaged. Rather than admitting poor Muslim youth and children, Gülenists prefer students from the wealthiest families. It is a typical strategy that also used in Turkey as well.Once these rich scions of the elite are recruited, they turn into cash cows for the cult.Rich, conservative families are asked to send their children to these schools that claim to offer a good education in a so-called Islamic environment. Students who are extremely successful alone can receive scholarships to escape the burden of the astronomical tuition fees in exchange for becoming the future financiers and recruiters of FETÖ. Still, no matter how in-need a pupil is, scholarships and places at the dormitories are only available to the recruited ones. Gülenists use the same tactic in Africa, spreading their tentacles all across the continent thanks to the funds provided by innocent Turkish citizens duped into believing that "saint-like" Fetullah Gülen's followers in Africa are helping our Muslim brothers and sisters.Gülenists have transformed the selfless profession of teaching into a commercial enterprise to fund their illegal activities. Recruits in Turkey are told to work as teachers for minimal wages, while families in countries they infiltrate are asked to pay exorbitant fees to transform their own children into FETÖ recruits. This vicious circle fed by a wicked ambition to dominate coming from the top is the primary source of human labor and income for the group.It was this serious threat Erdoğan was warning African countries about, advising them to take immediate measures to prevent huge future costs.No one is too young for Gülenists to indoctrinate. As early schooling is nowadays seen as a basic necessity, it was one of the segments the group invested in the most. If these children become sympathizers at a young age, it is easy to turn them into followers or fanatics when they are most susceptible. Once recruited, they can be easily manipulated into serving the cult in whatever capacity is deemed as appropriate by Gülenist elder brothers or imams. These indoctrinated recruits obeying orders from the top without question is exactly how the July 15, 2016 coup attempt came about.Infamous for being a devious, silent and disciplined group, Gülenists within state institutions, which can only be described as terrorist cells, hid themselves for years before being told to act. No one doubts that there are still many operatives lying dormant, waiting for the right time to strike. This is why it is such a difficult task to decipher who is truly a Gülenist, who also do their best to sow confusion into investigations by making baseless accusations against innocent people, all in an effort to delegitimize judicial processes.Conducting just and fair investigations is the biggest current challenge the Turkish state faces, especially in the public services as the constantly deceptive FETÖ continues to cast a shadow. Capturing FETÖ militants within the state is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.MOUNTAINS OF DATA TO BE ANALYZEDSo, how can Turkish authorities effectively eliminate Gülenist presence while acting within the confines of the law?There are several answers to this questions and a couple of measures that still need to be taken.One fact is the prevalent use of ByLock, a special encrypted chat application, by Gülenists. Some 230,000 people had used this app, 165,000 of whom have been identified. It is believed that some 50,000 downloaded it on their phones but never used it. Turkish security forces are currently sifting through the mountains of evidence collected from this app, which was used by many people, both within Turkey and abroad.Efforts to identify and hinder Gülenist agenda has been the top priority of Turkey for the past three years, since FETÖ launched a judicial coup attempt aimed at the government in December 2013.One clear obstacle in the fight against FETÖ is the discourse they use against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and Erdoğan, in which they try to portray Erdoğan's determination to fight them as a strictly personal issue. Even some AK Party and Erdoğan supporters were deceived by this discourse in the belief that the Gülen threat is exaggerated. Some were known to joke, "I missed the bus. Gülenists must be behind it." Once it became a matter of jokes, it was easy to trick people into believing that the government was wrong in its assessment of the threat.On July 15 last year, we all learned the extent of the threat. It took the threat of toppling Turkish democracy to convince all citizens that FETÖ poses the biggest danger to the country's well-being. What Gülenists perpetrated that night was a wake-up call for the collective consciousness of the Turkish people.GÜLENISTS KNEW WELL HOW THE STATE FUNCTIONSHaving risen from the bottom to the top in many state institutions over decades, it is likely that Gülenists know more about the inner mechanism of how the Turkish state works better than those who are currently working around the clock to catch them. Infiltrating state agencies since the 1970s, they were there when many of the democratization reforms were undertaken in the last 30 years. They know how the Turkish state works. However, they also were well-aware of the weaknesses in the system, hidden to most, bidding their time to exploit them. They know how the police try to uncover Gülenist moles or how the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) would go about blocking their actions. They also took special precautions to prevent identification. ByLock was one of these precautions.ByLock is a phone app that is impossible for the uninitiated to find and download. It was available for sale for two months only, after which it could be transferred only from phone to phone. There is no chance of anyone downloading it and using it for years by mistake. The app is also not a simple messaging program that you can easily sync with your cell number and quickly communicate with people in your contacts. Its high-tech features require users to enter specific passwords provided by a FETÖ member, who decides who communicates with whom. It is a very hierarchical social application, through which almost 200,000 people were receiving orders. When one considers the families and friends of the users, and the many who fled abroad after July 15 to take shelter, mainly in Western countries, one starts to get an inkling of an idea about the threat posed by FETÖ.This app was used for years by FETÖ, until the MİT got close and the group switched to another application.Meanwhile, Fetullah Gülen safely resides in his expensive compound in Pennsylvania, U.S. where American authorities remain unwilling to extradite him to a NATO ally that sees him as the most grievous threat to its democracy.The Turkish state is currently engaged in a comprehensive judicial process to expose all Gülenists while distinguishing the criminal from the innocent, regardless of whether they are parents, children, wives or husbands of top Gülenists that are responsible for the cold-blooded murder of 245 people on July 15.The putschists, who should have been in their barracks on the night of July 15 rather than on the streets firing at unarmed citizens, are easily identifiable. However, how can one identify those who remained behind the scenes, directing the whole episode? Or those who remain hidden, only waiting to pounce once given the opportunity?State servants accused of being Gülenists are subject to a different judicial process and are evaluated in accordance with their significance within the group. ByLock is just one part of the process. Other criteria include their involvement in money transactions, funding or donations on behalf of Gülenist bodies, especially after December 2013. The illegal wiretappings and leaked classified state documents provide significant evidence of Gülenists within the police and the judiciary who abused their authority.There are also those officials who used to work at recruitment departments. They provided the questions and answers to the recruitment tests to not only FETÖ members, but also their wives and friends. The surprising number of entrants who answered all the questions correctly in recruitment tests was one mystery authorities were trying to resolve for years. While millions of ordinary students and graduates studied hard to enter state institutes, military and police academies, it is now proven that Gülenists were receiving the answers in advance.The typical FETÖ infiltration exercise can be revealed by following the set of connections this evidence makes clear. A FETÖ recruit can cheat to get top marks in entrance exams, becoming a police officer or a member of the judiciary, then conducting illegal wiretaps to blackmail or leak classified information when told to.Those Gülenists out in the open, serving their master as journalists, businessmen or social media anarchists, are easy to identify. A slow and determined process is underway to identify the concealed operatives within the state and other institutions.The de-Gülenification of the Turkish state began in 2013, and has accelerated after July 15. However, it may take a couple more years for the entire de-cleansing to be complete. As Gülenists base their strategy on demagogy, propaganda and lies, the Turkish state has to follow a very slow and scrupulous legal process in order not to harm innocent civilians. As the international community has no respect for Turkey's fight for democracy, and hence, is not willing to cooperate in intelligence sharing or extraditing putschists, even though alone, the Turkish state has to continue to fight while warning all countries about the huge danger posed by FETÖ.