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2024-10-22 -Obits-
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US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused of Turkish coup, dies at 83
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[Rudaw] US-based Moslem holy man Muhammed Fethullah Gülen
>... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world. Gülen and Erdogan used to be really good friends, but only one of them could be sultan, and Gülen lost...>
, who was accused of orchestrating the attempted coup against the Ottoman Turkish government of President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First
 ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...
in 2016, died on Monday, sources close to the holy man announced.
"Dear Friends, Our teacher passed away on October 20, 2024, at 21:20 [US time] in the hospital where he had been receiving treatment for a while," read a post on X from Herkul Nagme, a website dedicated to publishing updates on Gulen’s life and his videos where he addresses his followers.
"His doctors will make a statement about the hospital process in the coming hours," it added
He was 83 years old.
Gulen and his transnational Hizemt [Service] movement, have been accused by Erdogan and the Ottoman Turkish government of orchestrating the 2016 failed coup attempt in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
that killed more than 240 people. His movement was declared a terrorist organization just two months before the incident and a countrywide crackdown ensued to capture his followers.
"Fethullah Gulen, the traitor and enemy of religion, who spent his entire life plotting against the Republic of Turkey, has died," Ottoman Turkish state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
TRT said on X.
Gulen moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, and has been residing there since then despite calls by Erdogan to return to Turkey in 2013.
In 2000, Gulen was tried in absentia and was charged with attempting to embed his supporters into civil service and important governmental positions to overthrow the government.
The charges were reversed in 2008 under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and then-prime minister Erdogan, who enjoyed good relations with the holy man until an abrupt end in 2013 after a corruption scandal involving Erdogan’s closest circles pitted the two men against one another. The Ottoman Turkish president accused Gulen of creating a "parallel state" within Turkey.
Erdogan’s consolidation of power has been denounced by Gulen, who has referred to the Ottoman Turkish president as a "dictator" and encouraged the US and European governments to do more to restore political freedoms in Turkey.
Gulen was stripped of his Ottoman Turkish nationality in 2017.
Gulen’s Hizmet movement has focused on establishing schools across the globe, claiming to increase the quality of education. The movement established its first schools in central Asia and later spread globally.
The movement established the first schools in the Kurdistan Region in 1994 in Erbil, and three years later in Sulaimani. The schools teach English, Kurdish, Arabic, and Ottoman Turkish languages.
Gulen’s followers claim the founding of the schools is in line with the vision of Kurdish Islamic scholar Said Nursi and his teachings, who had a vision of establishing schools to spread Islamic teachings.
Gulen was a one-time ally of Erdogan but they fell out spectacularly, and Erdogan held him responsible for the 2016 attempted coup in which rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters. Some 250 people were killed in the bid to seize power.
Gulen, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, denied involvement in the putsch.
According to its followers, Gulen’s movement — known as “Hizmet” which means “service” in Turkish — seeks to spread a moderate brand of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets and interfaith communication.
Since the failed coup, his movement has been systematically dismantled in Turkey and its influence has declined internationally.
Known to his supporters as Hodjaefendi, or respected teacher, Gulen was born in a village in the eastern Turkish province of Erzurum in 1941. The son of an imam, or Islamic preacher, he studied the Quran from infancy.
In 1959, Gulen was appointed as a mosque imam in the northwestern city of Edirne and began to come to prominence as a preacher in the 1960s in the western province of Izmir, where he set up student dormitories and would go to tea houses to preach.
These student houses marked the start of an informal network that would spread over the following decades through education, business, media and state institutions, giving his supporters extensive influence.
This influence also spread beyond Turkey’s borders to the Turkic republics of Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa and the West through a network of schools.
FORMER ERDOGAN ALLY
Gulen had been a close ally of Erdogan and his AK Party, but growing tensions in their relationship exploded in December 2013 when corruption investigations targeting ministers and officials close to Erdogan came to light.
Prosecutors and police from Gulen’s Hizmet movement were widely believed to be behind the investigations, and an arrest warrant was issued for Gulen in 2014, with his movement designated as a terrorist group two years later.
Soon after the 2016 coup, Erdogan described Gulen’s network as traitorsh and “like a cancer,” vowing to root them out wherever they are. Hundreds of schools, companies, media outlets and associations linked to him were shut down and assets seized.
Gulen condemned the coup attempt “in the strongest terms.”
“As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt,” he said in a statement.
In a crackdown after the failed putsch, which the government said targeted Gulen’s followers, at least 77,000 people were arrested and 150,000 state workers including teachers, judges, and soldiers suspended under emergency rule.
Companies and media outlets regarded as linked to Gulen were seized by the state or closed down. The Turkish government said its actions were justified by the gravity of the threat posed to the state by the coup.
Gulen also became an isolated figure within Turkey, reviled by Erdogan’s supporters and shunned by the opposition which saw his network as having conspired over decades to undermine the secular foundations of the republic.
Ankara has long sought to have him extradited from the US.
Speaking in his gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, Gulen said in a 2017 Reuters interview that he had no plans to flee the US to avoid extradition. Even then, he appeared frail, walking with a shuffle and keeping his longtime doctor close at hand.
Gulen had traveled to the US for medical treatment, but remained there as he faced a criminal investigation in Turkey.
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-10-22 00:00||
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Posted by Grom the Reflective 2024-10-22 02:45||
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