Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s struggle is no longer limited to the secular and Kemalist movements that he faced for years. Turkey has entered a more sensitive phase in which the conflict is heading within the conservative Islamic camp itself, with an unprecedented campaign in about a decade targeting religious movements that refused to fully submit to the dominance of the Justice and Development Party and expressed a willingness to confront Erdogan’s policies publicly.
According to an analysis by Dr. Michael Barak on the Israeli “N12” website, during the month of August 2026, the Turkish authorities launched a massive arrest campaign targeting a number of religious organizations, most notably the “Sulaymanji” group and the “Furkan” movement, and led to the arrest of dozens of activists on suspicion of economic violations, organized crime, and corruption.
However, the analysis believes that the real motive behind this step may be related to these organizations’ refusal to accept the complete hegemony of the ruling Justice and Development Party, their adherence to an independent political and religious line, and especially their willingness to publicly criticize Erdogan’s internal and foreign policies.
From this standpoint, Erdogan’s attempts to neutralize opposition religious power centers may reflect a broader struggle for control and influence within the conservative Islamic camp itself, going beyond the traditional rivalry between Erdogan and the secular Kemalist movement.
The major shift in Erdogan’s relationship with the religious opposition dates back to July 2016, after the failed military coup attempt that members of the Fethullah Gulen movement were accused of being behind.
The movement has succeeded over the years in building a wide network of educational institutions inside and outside Türkiye, in addition to developing centers of influence within state institutions, including law enforcement agencies.
After the failure of the coup, Erdogan launched a massive purge campaign within state institutions, and within days arrested a large number of workers in the army, police, judiciary, and public service.
This approach also extended to foreign policy, as Ankara exerted diplomatic pressure on a number of countries, especially in Africa, to close educational institutions affiliated with Gulen, in exchange for providing economic and military aid.
The majority of these countries responded to the Turkish demands and closed institutions associated with the movement.
Since the death of Fethullah Gulen in 2024 in exile in the United States, the movement’s influence within Türkiye has witnessed a noticeable decline.
However, the August 2026 campaign seemed different in its nature and scope, as Turkish law enforcement agencies carried out several waves of arrests, accompanied by the confiscation of assets and the blocking of social media accounts belonging to two prominent Islamist movements.
The Sulaymanjis group is considered one of the oldest religious movements in Türkiye, as it was founded in the late 19th century and is linked to the Naqshbandi Sufi order.
The group runs a huge network of mosques, student residences, educational institutions and associations within Türkiye and Europe, especially in Germany.
Between August 12 and 25, the authorities arrested Elihan Koreis, the group’s leader and grandson of its founder, along with his brother and about 100 members of the network.
During the years 2023 and 2024, most of the group’s members supported opposition candidates in the local elections.
This support, according to the analysis, contributed to the opposition winning a number of major cities, including Istanbul and Ankara, while the Justice and Development Party, led by Erdogan, suffered its first defeat at the national level in decades.
As for the “Furkan” movement, it was officially founded in 2003 by Alp Arslan Kuytul, a well-known preacher in Adana Province, who has built his influence since the mid-1990s through intense public and digital activity through social media.
Kuytul had previously been arrested in more than one case due to statements in which he attacked the policies of Erdogan’s government.
He also declared his support for the cultural and linguistic rights of the Kurds, considering that Turkish nationalism harms Muslim unity.
During the last year, Kuytul attacked Bilal Erdogan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, considering that he advanced in the political and social ladder not because of his competencies, but rather as a result of corruption in governance.
The analysis quotes Turks living in exile who oppose Erdogan as saying that the timing of the arrest campaign is linked to the proximity of the presidential elections scheduled in Turkey in 2028, and to Erdogan’s effort to neutralize any competing power centers before the election.
On the other hand, others believe that Erdogan has reached a level of political power that makes him feel that he no longer needs to cooperate with religious opponents in order to gain power or reduce the influence of secular movements.
Whether this or that interpretation is correct, the Turkish political science researcher Hakan Yavuz used the expression “Şahsım Devleti,” meaning “the personal state,” to describe what is happening in Türkiye.
This term refers to a process in which the power of the state and its institutions gradually merge with the personality and desires of the leader, to the point where the boundaries between the state and the person become blurred, in conjunction with a strong concentration of power around a single figure.
The analysis concludes that the wave of arrests targeting the “Sulaymanjis” and the “Furkan” movement cannot be viewed as merely a limited law enforcement campaign, but rather as a further expression of Erdogan’s political strategy based on intolerance of any independent center of power within the conservative camp.
In this context, the contradiction emerges between flexible dealing with movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which show complete loyalty to the authorities, and persecuting local Islamic groups that dare to criticize the government or support the opposition.
This contradiction, according to the analysis, further explains the new “rules of the game” within Türkiye.
In the era of the “personal state,” the decisive test for the regime was no longer the degree of religiosity or the level of ideological commitment to Islam, but rather the amount of complete submission to one person and his party.
Thus, Erdogan’s new campaign appears to be more than a security or judicial confrontation with religious movements, as it reveals the transition of the conflict in Turkey to a stage in which independence within the ruling camp itself becomes a source of threat, and political loyalty becomes a condition that takes precedence over identity and ideology.
