Posted on 21/10/2024 – 8:21 CEST•updated 11:48 ago
When he was allied with Erdogan, the Muslim cleric was classified by the Turkish authorities as the most wanted terrorist and since 2013 he has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, USA.
Fethullah Gülen died in Pennsylvania, media close to his organization reported.
Gulen, an influential Muslim cleric who was once a close friend of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, turned sworn enemy since 2013, is said to have died after being admitted to a hospital in the region where he was living in self-imposed exile for the last few years, as announced by the X Herkul website, which is close to his organization.
“Our teacher died on October 20, 2024, at 21:20, in the hospital where he was being treated,” writes Herkul in X.
His nephew Ebuseleme Gülen also confirmed Gülen’s death, as did Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on behalf of the government. “Our nation’s determination in the fight against terrorism will continue and the news of his death will not cause us complacency,” said Fidan.
According to its supporters, Gülen’s movement, known as Hizmet, which means “service” in Turkish, seeks to spread a moderate version of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets and interfaith communication. His followers called Gülen “Hojafendi”, which means “respected teacher”.
Gülen was born in a village in the Anatolian province of Erzurum and in 1959 was appointed imam in a mosque in Edirne, in north-west Turkey, and became a preacher in the 1960s in Izmir, where he established student dormitories and visited teahouses until preach These dormitories started an informal network, which spread over the following years through educational, business, government and journalistic institutions, giving its supporters great influence.
This influence spread beyond the borders of Turkey to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa and the West through a network of schools.
He was a close friend of Erdogan and the Justice and Development party, but tensions between them grew in December 2013 when corruption investigations targeting ministers and officials close to Erdogan came to light.
Prosecutors and police from the Gulen movement were widely believed to be behind the investigations, and an arrest warrant was issued for the preacher in 2014, with Hizmet designated as a terrorist organization two years later.
The Turkish authorities consider it as “most wanted terrorist” and the president of Turkey accused his organization of being behind the 2016 coup attempt, Gülen himself denies any involvement in the events of July 2016, even saying that “As someone who has suffered from various coups in the last five years, to accuse him of having anything to do with such an attempt.”
However, Erdogan’s regime launched an unprecedented pogrom against Gulen’s supporters in Turkey, arresting at least 77,000 people and suspending 150,000 civil servants. Companies and media outlets believed to be linked to Gulen have been shut down or arrested by the state, with the Turkish government saying its actions were justified by the scale of the threat the failed coup posed to the state.
A year after the coup, Gülen was stripped of his Turkish citizenship. An arrest warrant was issued against him and non-extradition to Turkey It has long been a point of friction in US-Turkey relations.