Turkey’s interior minister said on Monday that authorities had seized assets worth 76 billion lira ($1.8 billion) as part of investigations into 552 crime groups in the first 10 months of 2025.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya presented the numbers during a budget session of the Turkish parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee.
He said 6,788 people identified by authorities as members of organized groups were jailed this year. He did not specify what portion of the seized assets came from financial crimes, narcotics cases or other investigations.
Since a failed coup in 2016, Turkey has put an unprecedented number of private companies under the control of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF). A recent Financial Times investigation reported that TMSF now runs more than 1,000 companies after a rapid series of takeovers.
The Financial Times report said companies in media, energy, manufacturing, mining, education and finance were transferred to state control through trusteeship appointments. It listed groups such as Can Holding, the Ciner Group and the İstanbul Gold Refinery among those placed under TMSF management.
Lawyers and economists who examined the cases say many transfers took place without clear or consistent legal grounds. They also say companies previously cleared in audits were later seized under new allegations.
Yerlikaya’s statement that security forces seized 76 billion lira in assets this year adds to 328 billion lira in assets (about US $8 billion) cited in the Financial Times report.
Since September Turkish authorities have confiscated hundreds of companies.
The recent seizures come after the practice became widespread following a coup attempt in 2016.
According to figures published by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency in July, Turkish authorities have seized 784 companies with a total asset value of 42.3 billion lira at the time of their takeover, an estimated $14 billion in 2016 USD terms, as part of a sweeping crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement that followed the abortive putsch.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption probes in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following a failed coup on July 15 of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Since then, the Erdoğan government has seized schools, universities, media outlets, companies and their buildings and the assets of individuals, corporations and organizations that were allegedly linked to the movement.
A 2023 report by the Institute for Diplomacy and Economy estimated that Turkey has seized around $50 billion in assets from more than 1.5 million people since 2016, warning that the scale of the confiscations may constitute “persecution” amounting to crimes against humanity under international law.
