Fetullah Gülen, who ran the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), a shady network that disguised itself as a religious movement for decades, leaves behind a legacy of wrongdoings whose fallout continues to this day.

In all criminal cases against his group, Gülen, who reportedly died on Sunday in the United States, is the main suspect.

The actions of his group encompass a wide variety of criminal offenses, from illegal wiretapping to sham trials. Invariably, all are attempts to stifle the group’s critics and obtain more power within the state. To achieve its goals, FETÖ utilized everything, including fraud, forgery and murder.

Dink’s murder

The killing of an Armenian Turkish journalist, Hrant Dink, in 2007 was FETÖ's first attempt to overthrow the Turkish state.

Dink, editor-in-chief of the dual language Agos newspaper, was killed outside his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007, in a case that has since stirred outrage and intrigue.

Gülen was indicted in April 2017 over Dink’s murder, with the prosecution asking for a life sentence and arguing the incident was the beginning of FETÖ’s violent acts to take over the legislative, executive and judicial organs and all the other state institutions, including the armed forces and police, in Türkiye.

The 120-page indictment said that soldiers and police involved in the Dink murder later played an active role in the July 15 attempted coup, in which 252 people were killed.

Selam Tevhid plot

A few years later, FETÖ-linked police chiefs concocted a fictitious group named "Selam Tevhid" to justify an investigation into 238 suspects on allegations of espionage for Iran. Soon, the investigation secretly held between 2010 and 2013, expanded to some 7,000 people whose phones were tapped.

Among the prominent figures wiretapped as part of the "investigation" was then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It only came to light after a network of police chiefs and prosecutors linked to FETÖ tried to overthrow the government in December 2013, which, just like Selam Tevhid, was based on forged evidence targeting people close to the government under the guise of a graft probe.

Later investigations revealed the extent of wiretappings, which included people from all walks of life that the terrorist group sought to blackmail, silence or include in criminal cases with fabricated evidence. The defendants in the Selam Tevhid case were accused of wiretapping the phones of bureaucrats, politicians, heads of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and journalists.

In the 236th hearing of the case, the court handed down aggravated lifetime imprisonment for 20 defendants, including prominent police chiefs Yurt Atayün, Ali Fuat Yılmazer and Gültekin Avcı. They were arrested after FETÖ’s foiled plot to overthrow the government in December 2013.

Ergenekon, Balyoz cases

FETÖ was also involved in several high-profile trials, Ergenekon and Balyoz (Sledgehammer).

The Ergenekon conspiracy probe, dating back to 2007, led to a series of trials of military officers, politicians, academics and journalists alleged to be members of Ergenekon, a clandestine organization accused of plotting against the government.

They were convicted in 2013, but the Supreme Court of Appeals later overturned hundreds of convictions in the case.

Last year, Turkish authorities said the 2013 Ergenekon trial was based on fabricated evidence and blamed the prosecutors, who were FETÖ member soldiers, for trying to purge the military of rival officers.

In the Balyoz case, hundreds of Turkish military personnel, including high-ranking generals, were convicted for plotting a coup against the then-newly elected Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government in 2003.

In early 2015, an Istanbul high court overturned the convictions against all 236 suspects and acquitted them.

Intel chief’s questioning

In what investigators call the first attempt to harm the government, FETÖ-linked prosecutors and police officers tried to question and subsequently detain Hakan Fidan, then-director of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

MIT, which plays a key role in bringing members of the terrorist group to justice following the organization's coup attempt, has frequently been targeted by FETÖ, which tried to infiltrate the intelligence service as it did the military, law enforcement and judiciary.

The Feb. 9, 2012 incident was a plot to establish a link between the intelligence service and the PKK terrorist group through a sham investigation concocted by FETÖ-linked prosecutors and police chiefs.

Fidan did not go to the courthouse to testify, upon the instructions of then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, narrowly escaping an arrest that could have triggered a crisis.

Leaked audio recordings of conversations between MIT officials and PKK members, known as the "Oslo talks," made the headlines shortly before the attempt to arrest Fidan.

The talks were originally part of the government’s "reconciliation process" designed to put an end to PKK violence. However, the leaked tapes ended up being fodder for anti-government propaganda, with FETÖ-linked media outlets claiming collaboration between the PKK and the government.

In a March 3, 2021 ruling, an Istanbul court sentenced 15 defendants to prison, including life sentences for 10 defendants.

The trial against 18 defendants in total resumes at the Istanbul 23rd Heavy Penal Court closed-session since February last year.

MIT trucks

In January 2014, prosecutors affiliated with FETÖ ordered gendarmerie, also linked to the group, to stop a convoy of trucks belonging to MIT in Adana and Hatay provinces on their way to Syria, despite government orders to let the trucks pass.

The supplies in the trucks were seized and the MIT agents were handcuffed and detained.

The incident caused an uproar. In 2020, a court ruled that the incident was a plot planned and executed by FETÖ "to harm the state" by disclosing activities of the intelligence service.

A separate investigation was launched into Can Dündar, the journalist who published the photos of the trucks' contents, for his role in the plot.

The investigators say the MIT truck case was an attempt to discredit the intelligence service and tarnish the government's image by accusing it of supplying arms to militants in Syria.

Exam fraud

FETÖ is also implicated in a long-running scheme wherein handlers stole the questions for public personnel selection exams like the KPSS and distributed them to members to place its infiltrators in the bureaucracy, military and law enforcement.

FETÖ handlers who managed so-called student homes also aimed to ensure the candidates would score high on the exam by coding the levels of the suspects’ loyalty to the terrorist organization.