New Delhi: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has confirmed the death of a US-based cleric, Muhammed Fethullah Gulen, 83, whom Ankara held responsible for an attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, describing him as the leader of a “dark organization.”
“Our nation’s determination in the fight against terrorism will continue, and this news of his death will never lead us to complacency,” Fidan told a press conference. Gulen had denied involvement in the failed coup, but his movement was designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey. Herkel, a website that publishes Gulen’s sermons, said on its X-account on Monday that Gulen died on Sunday evening in the hospital where he was being treated.
Gulen raised Hizmet, a powerful Islamic movement in Turkey and beyond, but spent his later years accused of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Islamist cleric, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, denied involvement in the putsch.
According to his followers, Gulen’s movement, Hizmet, which means “service” in Turkish, sought to spread a moderate brand of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets, and inter-faith communication. Since the failed coup, his movement was systematically dismantled in Turkey and its influence declined internationally.
Born in 1941, Gulen was appointed as a mosque imam in 1959 in the northwestern Turkish city of Edirne and became a prominent preacher in the 1960s in the western province of Izmir. There he set up student dormitories and went to tea houses to preach.
In 2017, from his gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, Gulen told a media outlet he had no plans to flee the US to avoid extradition. Even then, he appeared frail, walking with a shuffle and keeping his doctor close at hand. Gulen had traveled to the US for medical treatment but remained there as he faced a criminal investigation in Turkey.