Morocco has joined the list of countries where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pursuing the followers and sympathizers of the Hizmet (Service) movement. Like many countries, Morocco has succumbed to Ankara’s pressure and arrested individuals affiliated with the movement that Fethullah Gulen established in 1970.

In January, the Moroccan government announced it was closing several schools that Turkish contractors affiliated with the Hizmet movement had run in the country since 1994. The shutdown was in response to official Turkish orders that classify the group as “terrorist” and accuse it of being implicated in the failed coup attempt of July 2016.

The Ministry of Interior accused the educational institutions of “turning the educational sector into fertile land for promotion of Gulen’s ideologies and spreading a line of thought that goes against Morocco’s religious and educational standards.”

A source close to Gulenist circles in Morocco told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the Moroccan authorities have been holding four Turks captive since March. The source said that the Moroccan Court of Cassation decided to hand over two of them to the Turkish authorities, but the decision has not been implemented and awaits approval from the Moroccan government. The captives concerned are Esmat Bakay, the owner of a clothes retail company in Casablanca, and Farhat Erdogan, who has lived in Morocco since 2011.