The judicial onslaught that hit Turkish academics and journalists after the failed coup attempt in July 2016 has now turned to actors, directors, screenwriters and other members of the country’s cinema industry.

Hundreds of academics had signed a Peace Declaration in January 2016, calling for an end to a military crackdown against Kurdish militants in residential areas in the Kurdish-majority southeast that claimed also civilian lives and devastated cities and towns. The signatories immediately faced judicial probes and many lost their jobs in the purges that followed the July 15 putsch. Now, the authorities have launched an investigation into 433 members of the cinema industry who had signed a joint statement in support of the academics.

The academics were accused of “insulting” state authorities and spreading “terrorist propaganda,” and their supporters from the cinema industry are now being probed for “praising criminals.” None of the academics have been convicted thus far, meaning they are not officially “criminals” yet. Hence, the new probe appears to lack any legal ground.

Whether the prosecutions will result in punitive measures remains to be seen, but they have already become grounds for sanctions in the professional lives of the accused. Members of the cinema industry fear they will be pushed out of the sector, just as many academics who signed the Peace Declaration were fired from their universities through legislative decrees, a tool the government obtained under the state of emergency declared after the putsch.