Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric who built a powerful Islamist movement in Turkey and beyond, but who spent his final years accused of plotting against the Turkish leader. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is dead. He is 83 years old.
Hercule, a website that publishes Gulen's sermons, reported in X that Gulen had died Sunday afternoon in a US hospital where he had been receiving treatment.
Gulen was a former ally of Erdogan, but they fell out and Erdogan blamed him for a 2016 coup attempt in which rebel troops seized fighter jets, tanks and helicopters. Two hundred and fifty people died in the attempt to seize power.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies involvement in the regime.
According to his followers, Gulen's movement is known as – ServiceIt means “service” in Turkish and seeks to spread a moderate version of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets and interfaith communication.
After the failed coup, his movement was systematically dismantled in Türkiye and its international influence diminished.
How do your followers know? hodjaefendiGulen, a respected professor, was born in 1941 in the town of Erzurum, in the eastern province of Türkiye. Son of an imam or Islamic preacher, he studied the Koran since he was little.
In 1959, Gülen was appointed imam of a mosque in the northwestern city of Edirne and rose to prominence as a preacher in the western province of Izmir in the 1960s, where he established dormitories for students and traveled to teahouses to preach.
These student houses marked the beginning of an informal network that spread over the following decades across academic, business, media and government institutions, giving its supporters widespread influence.
This influence spread beyond Türkiye's borders to the Turkish republics of Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa and the West through a network of schools.
Gulen was a close ally of Erdogan and his AK Party, but growing tensions in their relationship erupted in December 2013 when corruption investigations targeting ministers and officials close to Erdogan came to light.
Prosecutors and police from Gülen's Hizmet movement were widely believed to be behind the investigations and an arrest warrant was issued for Gülen in 2014, two years after his movement was designated a terrorist group.
After the 2016 coup, Erdogan described Gulen's network as traitors and “like a cancer,” and vowed to eradicate them wherever they were. Hundreds of schools, institutions, media outlets and associations associated with him were closed and properties were confiscated.
Gulen condemned the coup attempt “in the strongest terms.”
“As a victim of several military coups over the past five decades, it is humiliating to be accused of any involvement in such an attempt,” he said in a statement.
At least 77,000 people were arrested and 150,000 public officials, including teachers, judges and soldiers, were suspended under emergency rule in a crackdown on the failed regime that the government says targeted Gulen's supporters.
The government confiscated or closed businesses and media outlets believed to be linked to Gülen. The Turkish government said its actions were justified by the severity of the threat the coup posed to the government.
Gulen has also become an isolated figure in Turkey, vilified by Erdogan's supporters and shunned by the opposition, which sees his network as a decades-long plot to undermine the republic's secular foundations.
Ankara has been trying to extradite him from the United States for a long time.
Speaking at his closed compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Gülen said in an interview with Reuters in 2017 that he had no plans to flee the United States to avoid extradition. Even then, he seemed frail, walking quickly and holding his doctor in his hand.
Gulen had traveled to the United States for medical treatment but remained there because he faced criminal charges in Türkiye.
