The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) nabbed Koray Vural, a member of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in Tajikistan and brought him to Türkiye, security sources announced Thursday.
Vural was on the most wanted list of the Interior Ministry on charges of membership of FETÖ, which was behind, among other crimes, the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Türkiye.
A member of the terrorist group since his days in Türkiye, Vural settled in the Asian country upon orders of his superiors in the group.
There, he served as a senior administrator of the terrorist group and organized its activities in Tajikistan and the wider Central Asian region.
While in Tajikistan, he frequently traveled to Pennsylvania, United States to meet Fetullah Gülen, leader of FETÖ who resides in a retreat of the group.
Security sources said Vural was planning to flee Tajikistan after Emsal Koç, another fugitive FETÖ member, was deported to Türkiye from Tajikistan earlier.
The terrorist group, which lost influence in Türkiye thanks to counterterrorism operations especially in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt, long posed as a charity movement operating an international network of schools. Central Asia was among the places it has been influential.
In 2021, MIT captured and brought Orhan Inandı, the Central Asia chief of the terrorist group to Türkiye.
Inandı had an arrest warrant upon him on charges of terrorism. According to security sources, he rose to the rank of “Kyrgyzstan chief” in the terrorist group in 2001 before he was promoted to the rank of FETÖ leader for a region covering Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in 2017.
