Haluk Zeybel, a former judge on Turkey’s military appeals court who was dismissed and imprisoned over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement following a 2016 coup attempt, has died of cancer at age 66, the TR724 news website reported.
Zeybel died on November 4 at a hospital in Ankara, where he had been receiving cancer treatment.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated Erdoğan as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the failed coup or any terrorist activity.
Zeybel was detained following the attempted coup and dismissed from the Military Court of Appeals in October 2016.
In February 2020, the Supreme Court of Appeals sentenced him to more than 11 years in prison for membership in an armed terrorist organization. The sentence was upheld on appeal in 2021. Zeybel denied the accusations and requested acquittal and release.
Prosecutors cited three $1 bills found in Zeybel’s home as evidence against him, including one with a serial number beginning with “FG,” the initials of Fethullah Gülen. Zeybel denied that the bills constituted evidence of a crime.
Turkish authorities have claimed that $1 bills, particularly those with serial numbers beginning with an F, J, C or G, served as coded identifiers among members of the Gülen movement. Such banknotes have been cited in numerous investigations and prosecutions, including that of Turkish-American NASA scientist Serkan Gölge, who spent nearly three years in prison.
