The veil of secrecy shrouding the detention of Osman Kavala, a tireless and generous supporter of civil society in Turkey, has yet to be lifted since his detention at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on Oct. 18.

But the slander campaign against the prominent businessman and philanthropist is continuing full blast. Aydin Unal, a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Safak, likened Kavala to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based imam who is accused of seeking to violently overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It is quite clear that Kavala, just like Fethullah Gulen, is one of the baby-faced, masked as peace-loving, humanitarian-seeming tools collected internally to carry out the West’s operations on Turkey,” he wrote in his column today.

Sources with close links to the government speculate that Kavala’s detention is connected to an ongoing witch hunt in Turkish civil society. Many believe it was initiated by a mix of nationalists and pro-Russian “Eurasianists” in the judiciary and the security services bent on unmooring Turkey from the West. The same circles have been blamed for the flimsily documented terrorism charges, among others, that are being leveled against 11 human rights defenders, including Amnesty International's Turkey chair Taner Kilic and the group’s Turkey director Idil Eser, who will appear in court this week.

“The indictment against the group illustrates the Turkish authorities’ expanding practice of prosecuting normal civic activities as terrorist crimes,” wrote Nate Schenkkan of the New York-based rights watchdog Freedom House.