Fethullah Gulen: Self-exiled Turkish religious chief and Erdogan’s foe dies in Pennsylvania | EUROtoday

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Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive US-based Islamic cleric and one of many greatest foes of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has died after a protracted sickness in Pennsylvania on the age of 83.

Gulen led a motion referred to as Hizmet that was condemned as a “terrorist” organisation by the Turkish authorities and accused of orchestrating an abortive coup try to topple Mr Erdogan’s administration in 2016. He denied the allegations repeatedly.

Gulen’s dying was confirmed by his nephew Kemal Gulen who spoke to Abdullah Bozkurt, the previous editor of the Gulen-linked Today’s Zaman newspaper.

Turkish state media quoted overseas minister Hakan Fidan saying that Gulen’s dying had been confirmed by Turkish intelligence sources.

Gulen spent the final a long time of his life in self-exile, residing on a gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains from the place he continued to wield affect amongst his hundreds of thousands of followers in Turkey and past. He espoused a philosophy that blended Sufism – a mystical type of Islam – with staunch advocacy of democracy, schooling, science and interfaith dialogue.

Gulen was as an ally of the Turkish chief till 2013, however grew to become a foe after he referred to as Mr Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating energy and crushing dissent.

Mr Erdogan solid Gulen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the tried army coup on the night time of 15 July 2016 when factions throughout the army used tanks, warplanes and helicopters to attempt to overthrow Erdogan’s authorities.

Heeding a name from the president, hundreds took to the streets to oppose the takeover try. The coup plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and different authorities buildings. A complete of 251 folks had been killed and round 2,200 others had been wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters had been additionally killed.

Gulen denied involvement, and his supporters dismissed the costs as ridiculous and politically motivated.

Gulen had lived in Pennsylvania since 1999 and was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017.

Turkey put Gulen on its most-wanted listing and demanded his extradition, however the US confirmed little inclination to ship him again, saying it wanted extra proof. Gulen was by no means charged with a criminal offense within the US, and he constantly denounced terrorism in addition to the coup plotters.

In Turkey, Gulen’s motion was subjected to a broad crackdown. The authorities arrested tens of hundreds of individuals for his or her alleged hyperlink to the coup plot, sacked greater than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and greater than 23,000 from the army, and shuttered a whole lot of companies, faculties and media organizations tied to Gulen.

Gulen referred to as the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants”.

“The last year has taken a toll on me as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government decides they are somehow ‘connected’ to me or the Hizmet movement and treats that alleged connection as a crime,” he stated on the one-year anniversary of the failed coup.

Turkish overseas minister on Monday stated Gulen’s dying “will not make us complacent”. “Our nation and state will continue to fight against this organization, as they do against all terrorist organisations,” he added.

Gulen was born in Erzurum, in jap Turkey. His official start date was 27 April 1941, however that has lengthy been in dispute. Y Alp Aslandogan, who leads a New York-based group that promotes Gulen’s concepts and work, stated Gulen was truly born someday in 1938.

Trained as an imam, or prayer chief, Gulen gained discover in Turkey some 50 years in the past. He preached tolerance and dialogue between faiths, and he believed faith and science may go hand in hand. His perception in merging Islam with Western values and Turkish nationalism struck a chord with Turks, incomes him hundreds of thousands of followers.

Gulen’s acolytes constructed a loosely affiliated international community of charitable foundations, skilled associations, companies and faculties in additional than 100 nations, together with 150 taxpayer-funded constitution faculties all through the United States. In Turkey, supporters ran universities, hospitals, charities, a financial institution and a big media empire with newspapers and radio and TV stations.

But Gulen was seen with suspicion by some in his homeland, a deeply polarised nation cut up between these loyal to its fiercely secular traditions and supporters of the Islamic-based celebration related to Erdogan that got here to energy in 2002.

Gulen had lengthy avoided overtly supporting any political celebration, however his motion cast a de facto alliance with Erdogan in opposition to the nation’s previous guard of staunch, military-backed secularists, and Gülen’s media empire threw its weight behind Erdogan’s Islamic-oriented authorities.

Gülenists helped the governing celebration win a number of elections. But the Erdogan-Gulen alliance started to crumble after the motion criticized authorities coverage and uncovered alleged corruption amongst Erdogan’s inside circle. Erdogan, who denied the allegations, grew weary of the rising affect of Gülen’s motion.

The Turkish chief accused Gulen’s followers of infiltrating the nation’s police and judiciary and establishing a parallel state, and started agitating for Gülen’s extradition to Turkey even earlier than the failed 2016 coup.

In 2000, with Gulen nonetheless within the US, Turkish authorities charged him with main an Islamist plot to overthrow the nation’s secular type of authorities and set up a non secular state.

Some of the accusations in opposition to him had been based mostly on a tape recording on which Gulen was alleged to have instructed supporters of an Islamic state to bide their time: “If they come out too early, the world will quash their heads.” Gulen stated his feedback had been taken out of context.

The cleric was tried in absentia and acquitted, however he by no means returned to his homeland. He gained a prolonged authorized battle in opposition to the administration of then-president George W Bush to acquire everlasting residency within the US.

Rarely seen in public, Gulen lived quietly on the grounds of an Islamic retreat middle within the Poconos. He occupied a small condo on the sprawling compound and left principally solely to see docs for illnesses that included coronary heart illness and diabetes, spending a lot of his time in prayer and meditation and receiving guests from world wide.

Gulen by no means married and didn’t have kids. It is just not recognized who, if anybody, will lead the motion.

Tributes poured in for Gulen on Monday, with supporters remembering him as a “man of faith who transformed the lives of millions of people across the world”.

“Another voice of peace muted, a great loss to humanity,” wrote Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.