Gulen encouraged his followers in his sermons in the 1990s to infiltrate state institutions and fill in whereever there is an empty slot. Several investigations showed that Gulen’s followers indeed infiltrated important state institutions such as the judiciary, the police, the public sector and the military. Their suspected involvement in some of the assassinations that took place in the 2000s is also being investigated. Following a National Security Council meeting in May 2016, the Turkish government officially designated the movement as a terrorist organization, naming it the Fetullah Terror Organization, better known by its Turkish acronym FETO.
