A former ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen spent years eluding the clutches of Turkey’s president, who accused him of masterminding a failed 2016 coup.
After practically 25 years residing away from Turkey, Gulen died in hospital in a single day, Turkish public tv stated, citing teams near the 83-year-old preacher.
The pinnacle of the influential Hizmet group turned the sworn enemy of the president.
Erdogan’s authorities accused him of heading a “terrorist” organisation in addition to organising the 2016 bid to overthrow the president.
However Gulen insisted Hizmet — Turkish for “service” — was merely a community of charitable organisations and companies.
The pair had been as soon as allies.
Erdogan profited from Gulen’s community to consolidate energy after turning into prime minister in 2003 within the face of an entrenched secular institution.
– From ally to nemesis –
However tensions started rising in 2010 solely to blow up into full-on enmity three years later when a corruption scandal shattered Erdogan’s internal circle.
Erdogan blamed Gulen for masterminding the graft probe via his community of supporters within the judiciary and the police, turning him into “public enemy primary”.
Since then, Erdogan has since accused the influential cleric — whose motion is current on each continent with its sprawling community of public colleges — of main a parallel state designed to overthrow him.
The president’s hatred intensified following the botched coup of July 2016, which he believes was engineered by his former ally.
Within the instant aftermath, the authorities started a crackdown on the preacher’s supporters, or “Gulenists”.
Practically 700,000 individuals had been prosecuted and a few 3,000 had been sentenced to life jail for enjoying a job within the coup, authorities say.
Through the unprecedented purge, greater than 125,000 public sector staff had been sacked or suspended, together with round 24,000 navy personnel and hundreds of judges.
The authorities shut down personal colleges, media retailers and publishing homes.
Turkish intelligence companies additionally staged a number of abroad raids in nations throughout central Asia, Africa and the Balkans to spherical up Gulen’s suspected supporters.
– From anonymity to religious chief –
Gulen was born within the japanese Turkish province of Erzurum. Public information say it was 1941 however Gulen stated he was born in 1938.
Regardless of being “simply one other imam within the Nineteen Seventies” Gulen rapidly turned “the religious chief of an enormous group with thousands and thousands of supporters”, wrote researcher Bayram Balci.
Supporters had been “current in all sectors of the economic system, in schooling, within the media, and in addition within the administration”, Balci, a researcher on the Paris Institute of Political Research (Sciences-Po), stated in a 2021 research.
“With a style for secrecy and affect, and even manipulation and intimidation… Gulen’s motion is similar to varied Catholic actions just like the Jesuits, Opus Dei and others, from which it has clearly drawn inspiration,” he stated.
Turkish officers discuss with Gulen’s motion because the “FETO terrorist organisation”.
It has generally been described as a “sect”, with members recognized to assist one another in enterprise and anticipated to contribute their time or cash, whether or not college students, housewives or rich businessmen.
Gulen moved to the US state of Pennsylvania in 1999, ostensibly for well being causes.
Regardless of a number of makes an attempt by Turkey to extradite him, Gulen led a reclusive life in exile on the sting of the Poconos, a scenic mountainous, wooded area of Pennsylvania.
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