The Imam's Army

The Imam's Army (Turkish: İmamın Ordusu) is a book by Turkish journalist Ahmet Şık on the life and work of Fethullah Gülen and his Gülen movement. Şık was detained in March 2011, before the book was published, and the draft book was seized by the government and banned, claiming it was an "illegal organizational document" of the secret organization Ergenekon. Şık was detained pending trial, being eventually released pending trial in March 2012. In the interim, in an act of anti-censorship defiance, a version of the book was released in November 2011 under the name 000Kitap (000Book), edited by 125 journalists, activists and academics, and published by Postacı Publishing House.

On 3 March 2011 eleven people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara, including the journalists Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener. On 6 March they and another seven people were arrested on the allegation they were members of the secret organization Ergenekon. On or around 23 March Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 12 ordered the confiscation of a draft for a book that Ahmet Şık wanted to publish under the title of "The Imam's Army". On 1 April 2011 unknown people made the book available on the Internet, and over 200,000 copies were downloaded.

Şık was indicted in the Ergenekon Odatv case because of The Imam's Army, a copy of which was allegedly found on odatv computers. On 26 August 2011 İstanbul prosecutor Cihan Kansız sent a 134-page indictment on 14 defendants, 12 of them in pre-trial detention to the newly founded Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 16. One of the imprisoned defendants was Ahmet Şık. The charges included membership or support of an armed organization and incitement to hatred and enmity. Ahmet Şık was charged with support of an armed organization. On 13 September 2011 Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 16 decided that the trial would start on 22 November 2011.