Self-exiled Turkish spiritual leader Fethullah Gulen dies in US

Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive U.S.-based Islamic cleric who inspired a global social movement while facing accusations that he masterminded a failed 2016 coup in his native Turkey, has died, authorities said.

Abdullah Bozkurt, a former editor of Today’s Zaman newspaper linked to Gulen who is now in exile in Sweden, said Gulen’s nephew, Kemal Gulen, confirmed the death.

Fethullah Gulen was in his eighties and had long suffered from health problems.

The state-run Anadolu agency quoted Hakan Fidan of Turkey’s Foreign Ministry as saying the death was confirmed by Turkish intelligence sources.

Gulen spent the last decades of his life in self-exile, living in a gated compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, from where he continued to exert influence among his millions of followers in Turkey and around the world.

He embraced a philosophy that combined Sufism – a mystical form of Islam – with a firm defense of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.

Gulen started out as an ally of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan but became an enemy.

He called Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating power and crushing dissent. Erdogan classified Gulen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the attempted military coup on the night of July 15, 2016, when military factions used tanks, warplanes and helicopters to try to overthrow the government.

Responding to an appeal from the President, thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the attempt to take power.

The coup plotters opened fire on crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were injured. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed.

Gulen vehemently denied involvement and his supporters called the accusations ridiculous and politically motivated.

Turkey placed Gülen on its most wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the United States showed little desire to send him back, saying it needed more evidence. Gulen has never been charged with any crime in the US and has consistently denounced terrorism as well as coup plotters.

In Türkiye, Gülen’s movement – ​​sometimes known as Hizmet, which means “service” in Turkish – has been subject to widespread repression.

The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged connection to the coup plot, fired more than 130,000 alleged supporters from public service jobs and more than 23,000 from the army,
and closed hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations linked to Mr. Gulen.

Gulen called the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Türkiye’s leaders as “tyrants.”

On the first anniversary of the failed coup, he said: “The past year has had a negative impact on me, as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government has decided that they are somehow ‘linked’ to me or the Hizmet movement. and treats this supposed connection as a crime.”