A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a man convicted of membership in the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in Türkiye played into the hands of other members of the group, which was behind the 2016 coup attempt in the country.

The top court’s ruling that the rights of Yüksel Yalçınkaya were violated pushed more members of the terrorist group to appeal to the court. The ECtHR, in return, instantly admitted the application of 1,000 people.

Yalçınkaya, a teacher in the central province of Kayseri, was expelled from his public sector job for links to FETÖ, and in 2017 was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for membership in the group. His appeal for rights violation was accepted by the ECtHR and the court ruled in his favor on Sept. 26, to the chagrin of Ankara. The ruling set a precedent for other FETÖ members seeking to escape charges in Türkiye.

The ruling was denounced by Ankara and in September, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç accused the court of overstepping its authority, "by assessing evidence."

Tunç said all judicial authorities in Türkiye had ruled that there was sufficient evidence to prove Yalçınkaya’s links to FETÖ and that the ECtHR is not a court of appeal. The ECtHR moved away from its precedents by analyzing evidence, even though in previous rulings it has noted that it does not have the prerogative to do so.

The ECtHR claimed that Yalçınkaya’s rights had been violated.

The ECtHR, in a damning ruling, said: "Anyone who had used ByLock could, in principle, be convicted on that basis alone of membership of an armed terrorist organisation."

The ECtHR said there were currently 8,500 applications of a similar nature and "given that the authorities had identified around 100,000 ByLock users, many more might potentially be lodged."

This was a final verdict issued by the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, whose rulings are binding for all 46 members of the Council of Europe.

The ECtHR ruling disregards evidence linking the use of the encrypted app to FETÖ.

Applications in the wake of the ruling consist of complaints filed by FETÖ members between 2019 and this year. In a statement earlier this week, the ECtHR said it gave notice to the Turkish government of five cases covering 1,000 applications concerning convictions for membership in an armed terrorist organization.

"According to the applicants, their convictions were based on their alleged use of the encrypted messaging application called 'ByLock,' which the domestic courts held had been designed for the exclusive use of FETÖ/PDY members under the guise of a global application. That meant that anyone who had used Bylock could, in principle, be convicted on that basis alone of membership in an armed terrorist organization. The applicants mainly complain that their trial and conviction for membership of (FETÖ) violated the principle of no punishment without law under Article 7 of the European Convention and/or the right to a fair trial under Article 6, 1 of the Convention," a statement published on court’s website says.

In 2020, Türkiye’s Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court ruled in two verdicts that having downloaded ByLock, an encrypted messaging app developed and exclusively used by members of the FETÖ, was sufficient evidence of defendants’ connections to the group.

The rulings shot down the defense by members of the terrorist group who claim they unknowingly downloaded ByLock, possession of which has led to the prosecution of hundreds of people over the past few years. The terrorist group, which tried to seize power in a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, employed the app for secret communications among its military infiltrators long before the coup attempt.

FETÖ faces heightened scrutiny after the coup attempt. Many members of the terrorist group fled Türkiye while operations continued to hunt down those in hiding. On Thursday, security forces in Istanbul detained 13 fugitive members of the group hiding in safe houses known as "gaybubet." Among the captured were academics and a military officer who were earlier expelled from their jobs and were on the run. Authorities said some suspects were Bylock users. Also on Thursday, 16 suspects were captured in the western province of Izmir in another operation against FETÖ, including a former member of the Court of Appeals.

In an effort to keep its current formation in Türkiye alive, FETÖ has been working to maintain a foothold in prisons, keep up the morale among its jailed members by handing out new tasks and preventing them from becoming collaborators, according to a report in Turkish newspaper Sabah. The terrorist group has been silencing unrest with the threat that informants will be 'condemned to eternal fire' and 'those serving time will be exempt from torture in the afterlife,'" Sabah wrote.

Reports detailing investigations showed the group has been trying to sustain its financial arm with payments referred to as "aliment" and pricing escape routes for its members.

New information has also revealed the group’s extensions in Türkiye’s penal institutions are in two different formations, with the first holding posts like "prison manager," "execution protection officer" and "administrative officer," while the second group is prisoners and their families. Operatives still at large include judges, prosecutors, lawyers, as well as imams (Muslim clerics), tasked with delivering FETÖ’s message of silence to members who want to confess.

Imams preach to members that collaborators will "forever burn in hell" and those who are in prison will "be forgiven all of their sins and be able to help their families reach heaven," while lawyers work to convince convicted members they will be paid "a hefty sum" once their sentence is over, that their case will be denied by the ECtHR and thus they will lose any chance of compensation. Meanwhile, the group also has a network of "persuaders" in prisons who are tasked with keeping newly convicted members loyal to FETÖ. They reportedly tell members who are eager for rank and status they will be rewarded with even higher positions once they are released. If the member has a religious weakness, the persuader promises "paradise."

The terrorist group, which had infiltrators in law enforcement, the judiciary and the bureaucracy, still has backers in the army ranks and civil institutions, though they managed to disguise their loyalty, as operations and investigations since the coup attempt have indicated.

Hundreds of investigations launched after the attempt sped up the collapse of the group’s far-reaching network in the country. FETÖ was already under the spotlight following two separate attempts to overthrow the government in 2013 through its infiltrators in the judiciary and law enforcement.