The confession of a medical major reveals the deep roots of FETÖ terrorists’ infiltration into the Turkish military and police.

A now detained medical major’s confession has exposed the depths of the Gülenist Terrorist Group’s (FETÖ) infiltration of Turkish state institutions, in this case, the Air Forces Command.

Ömer T., detained on May 14, 2024, and facing up to 15 years in prison for being a member of an armed terrorist organization, has divulged 21 FETÖ members in his confession to benefit from the effective remorse law, according to the indictment released by the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in the capital Ankara on Thursday.

Ömer T.’s statement goes into length about the "coding system" FETÖ used to get its select members into the Turkish Air Force.

Meeting Gülen

He was first contacted by FETÖ terrorists as a middle schooler, Ömer T. said, adding that after he told the FETÖ handlers that he wanted to go to military school, he was enrolled into the group’s "homes" to prepare for entrance exams.

After he passed the military high school exams, Ömer T. regularly met with the FETÖ handler supervising his education.

When he ranked first in his school, Ömer T. was taken to a FETÖ compound in Istanbul’s Altunizade district to personally meet with FETÖ ringleader Fetullah Gülen by a FETÖ member code-named "Ismail," the major said in his statement.

"I met Fetullah Gülen, and he gave me a watch after congratulating me. We had dinner together," Ömer T. said.

In 1999, the major got into the Gülhane Military Medical Academy, now known as the Gülhane Training and Research Hospital (GATA) in Ankara, and began serving at the ninth main jet base command in the western Balıkesir province following his graduation.

Marking cadets

He said he was later put in charge of aviation cadets at the preparation school, because of which he said FETÖ members contacted him to "keep harmful individuals out of military schools."

A so-called "private imam," a somewhat high-ranking position within FETÖ, going by the name of "Sami" met him in the western city of Izmir’s Bornova province and told him the situation was "set," that a QR code was placed over the student identity cards, which would later be torn apart.

According to Ömer T., Sami said cadets were categorized based on the last digit of the total sum of the last three digits in the barcode number of a student’s exam entry paper.

"He told me the group coded people as ‘positive’ individuals, meaning people already in FETÖ, ‘negative’ individuals who were not members, and ‘indifferent’ individuals based on these last digits," Ömer T. said.

"This made me realize how powerful and dangerous the organization is," he said, adding that he later tried not to accept the next exam commissions through various excuses.

Ömer T.’s statement echoes similar confessions from 15 other suspects who were arrested in Ankara also on Thursday for serving FETÖ’s so-called "secret formation" within the Turkish police force.

The suspects, among 19 people arrested as part of the investigation into FETÖ’s infiltration into police institutions, also pleaded the effective remorse law and agreed to identify people they knew to be connected to FETÖ.

FETÖ threat

Since December 2013, when it emerged as the perpetrator of two coup attempts disguised as graft probes, FETÖ has been regarded as a security threat.

Prosecutors say that the group's infiltrators in law enforcement, the judiciary, bureaucracy and the military had waged a long-running campaign to topple the government. The group is also implicated in a string of cases related to its alleged plots to imprison its critics, money laundering, fraud and forgery.

FETÖ has been under more intense scrutiny since the July 15, 2016, coup attempt its infiltrators in the army carried out, which left 251 people dead and thousands more injured. Under a state of emergency following the attempt, tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested or dismissed from public sector jobs.

The terrorist group faces operations almost daily as investigators still try to uncover their massive network of infiltrators everywhere – from military and police to judiciary and bureaucracy.

The Ministry of National Defense announced in 2022 that 24,387 Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) members were sacked since the coup attempt for possible ties to the group, while administrative inquiries are underway for over 700 others.

Meanwhile, an unknown number of FETÖ members, mostly high-ranking figures, fled Türkiye when the coup attempt was thwarted. Since then Ankara has sped up extradition processes for members of FETÖ abroad, including Fetullah Gülen, who has lived in the United States since 1999.

Ankara formally requested Gülen's extradition on July 19, 2016, and has been pressing the U.S. ever since, sending hundreds of folders full of evidence implicating Gülen and FETÖ in the coup attempt.

The issue has been raised in bilateral meetings between Turkish and American officials through phone calls, letters and other exchanges.