Talk:Fethullah Gülen/Archive 8

Analyses and/or points of view

 * 1) ReligionNewsService: "Gulen’s followers see themselves as nonpolitical, a civil society organization – sharply different from the Muslim Brothers, an Islamist political organization with an explicitly political agenda. And it is true that the Gulenists never established a political party. But their initial alliance with Erdogan – and, later, their conflict with him – demonstrates that Gulenists are a deeply political force in Turkey. Like the Muslim Brothers, the Gulenists have a certain Utopian vision of their religion. Both groups see Islam – albeit different versions of it – as the solution to all society’s ills. Religion is, for these organizations, a blueprint that should guide Muslims in every detail of their life, from restroom manners to governance. The judiciary, military and police, too, should be 'Islamic.' In their quest to control everyday life in Turkey and Egypt, the Gulenists and the Muslim Brothers made enemies. They alienated secular citizens, who rejected the “Islamization” of their country. They also angered other Islamic groups, who felt themselves being edged out of power."
 * 2) NordicMonitor: "Fethullah Gülen, a chief opponent of the Erdoğan regime who has been living in the US since 1999, accused Erdoğan of funding and arming jihadist terror groups including the Nusra front and ISIL in Syria in order to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime, during an interview in July 2016 with reporters from major media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Sky News, CNN, The Guardian and Reuters."
 * 3) RussiaToday: "Turkey’s most famous preacher"
 * 4) diff: >>>>>there have been previous Turks in the NBA, including Mehmet Okur and Hedo Turkoglu, to name just two. But none of those predecessors—unlike Kanter—was ever targeted for arrest by Turkey as a result of his religion. Kanter is, in addition to being a Knick, the highest-profile and most outspoken disciple in the United States of the cleric Fethullah Gulen. ... ... ... the Turkish government has branded the Gulenists as terrorists, likening an organization that calls itself Hizmet, or “Service,” to al Qaeda. And it’s indisputable the group did some odious things during the decade or so when it was allied with the AKP such as fabricating evidence against their opponents, enabling the detention of journalists, illicitly recording Turkish officials, and engaging in questionable financial practices at Gulen-run charter schools. Does any of this make Enes Kanter a terrorist?<<<<<
 * 5) TheRinger:

Gulen has long been a controversial figure in Turkey. Despite his passion for promoting an Islam that is conversant and compatible with Western culture, many in Turkey have long been suspicious of his motives, seeing his influence as antithetical to the country’s tradition as a secularist state. Some call Hizmet a cult. “I would consider the Gulen movement a high-pressure religious group bordering on a cult-like organization,” says Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament, where he represented the secularist Republican People’s Party, and currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Gulen-affiliated schools in Turkey have historically had a heavy emphasis on math, sciences, and English-language skills, alongside behind-the-scenes indoctrination into Gulen’s teachings. This came with the expectation that you would be loyal to the Gulen network for the rest of your life.”

Kanter seems unbothered when I mention the characterization of Hizmet as a cult, but also eager to push back. “I don’t really understand that,” he says. “I know this man, and the biggest thing he cares about is education. Not just religious education, but education—period. Why is that a bad thing? How is that a cult?” Kanter also points to the fact he’s known of people to leave the movement without facing any sense of retribution or animosity. Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who recently interviewed Kanter for Salon, says of Gulen: “He’s very good at presenting the face of this oppressed progressive religious group. And I believe those things are truly very important to the movement—Islamic principles, science, interreligious dialogue. But they’re also hardcore nationalists.”

For years, Gulen and Erdogan had been allies. While Erdogan wielded power in government, Gulen wielded influence over the attitudes and priorities of many members of Turkey’s middle and upper classes, each man seeming to work toward a Turkey that was devoutly Islamic but open to Western ideas and institutions. Their relationship began to fray early this decade. “A behind-the-scenes power struggle between former allies erupted into an all-out war in 2013,” says Erdemir. That year, officials widely believed to be part of the Hizmet movement led much of the investigation into corruption in Erdogan’s government. “It was a question of, ‘Now who’s going to be the big boss?’” Against the backdrop of this dynamic, Erdogan took little time to assign blame on the night of the coup attempt. This, he believed, was Gulen’s fault.

Gulen has denied any involvement. “If there was one little piece of evidence that the Gulen movement was involved,” Kanter says, “the United States would deport him.” No public evidence has emerged to link Gulen to the effort. Kanter was with Gulen—whose home he visits often—on the day of the coup attempt, he says. “I was with him,” Kanter says of the man accused by Erdogan of masterminding the entire operation. “I was with him the whole time, and do you know what he was doing? He was sitting there watching on television and praying for his country. That’s it.” Kanter says that everyone in the room was horrified by what they saw. Even among a crowd of people who vehemently opposed Erdogan’s rule, no one wanted to see him removed from power like this. “It was a nightmare,” Kanter says. “Even if there was a chance Erdogan might go down, you never want to see that happen to your country or your people. Hundreds of people died, a lot of them in terrible, awful ways. Your family is still there. You don’t know what’s going to happen to them. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. It was the worst feeling in the world.”

The coup attempt failed. Erdogan’s message to supporters to take to the streets worked—thousands flooded the country’s major cities, and their resistance was enough to slow the military segment’s rogue efforts. Military factions loyal to Erdogan overtook those who’d initiated the coup, and by a little after midnight in Istanbul, soldiers had surrendered to police units loyal to the government, and the country’s interior minister announced that the effort had been “neutralized.”

Newly emboldened, Erdogan cracked down on his enemies harder than ever in the days and months that followed. All Hizmet schools across the country were shut down. Many thousands of government employees—from police to bureaucrats to academics—were fired from their jobs, according to TurkeyPurge.com, a site run by Turkish journalists. More than 80,000 people, many with Gulenist sympathies, have been arrested, according to both the same site and to Cook. “These people are essentially political prisoners,” says Cook. “The evidence against them is extremely thin.” Once seen as a democratic reformer, Erdogan is now regarded by many in diplomatic and human rights circles as, essentially, a dictator-lite. “He’s a ruthless authoritarian,” says Cook, who also acknowledges that Erdogan is a masterful politician who enjoys wide support, even as he terrorizes the many Gulenists and secularists who oppose him. “What you have,” says Cook, “is this modern-day reign of terror—without the blood.” While Erdogan has accused Gulen of masterminding the coup attempt, Kanter and others have suggested that Erdogan planned it himself. Says Cook: “I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened. But I think what happened is somewhat less important than the political effects of the event. Not to suggest that I think it was put on by the government, but what I do know is that the coup attempt has benefited Erdogan greatly to accelerate a purge that was already underway.”


 * 1) WashingtonPost: "The [Gulen] movement has been an influential player in Turkish politics since the late 1980s. In the 2000s, it openly allied with the AKP government, supporting a number of its key policies, most importantly the weakening of the power of the military and secularist judiciary. Many have alleged that the Gulenists have come to dominate many cadres in the state bureaucracy, particularly the police and the judiciary, making them a significant political force to reckon with in Turkish politics. Today the AKP government accuses the movement of forming a parallel organization within the state to capture state authority. Since the corruption probe the government has purged hundreds of alleged Gulenists from the cadres of the police and the judiciary. In the past decade, scholars have noted the rise of a different conception of Turkish nationalism, called Muslim or Islamic nationalism, which has led to a transformative shift in the official state discourse. The AKP and the Gulen movement share some broad tenets of Muslim nationalism. Challenging the secular and Westernist character of Kemalist nationalism, they emphasize Muslim identity as the key element in defining Turkishness. Accordingly, the ideal Turk should have a strong moral character informed by Sunni Islamic values. They criticize Kemalist nationalists for being elitist and imitative, forcing people to change their authentic selves in the name of Westernization." ... ... ... "Fethullah Gulen is a leading advocate of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, endorsing the view that Turkish Islam is unique and superior to the Islam of other ethnic groups. According to this view, Islam did not come to the Turkish world from the Arabs but came to Anatolia from Central Asia by way of Sufi dervishes. This Sufi connection makes Turkish Islam more moderate, tolerant and open to interpretation and change than the Arab and Persian forms of Islam, which are more prone to radicalization."
 * 2) NewYorkTimes: >>>>>Hendrick says that “groups coming from the same educational or religious networks and gaining positions of authority in the state — for the United States, this is normal. In Turkey, where the state has not been open to all, it is conspiratorial.” Osman Can says their [Gulenists'] presence in the judiciary is a “violation of state sovereignty.” The Gulenists’ opacity makes it difficult to tell whether they seek to control Turkey. Nonetheless, that they are able to exercise any power at all resulted from the same forces that allowed Erdogan to come to power, as well as made it possible for thousands of Turks to occupy a park — because Turkey had opened up to them. But Erdogan no longer has use for his country’s nascent inclusiveness.<<<<<

>>>>>[Erdogan] framed religious rights in terms of personal freedom. As a Turkish scholar named M. Hakan Yavuz put it in his 2009 book, “Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey,” the A.K.P. didn’t operate outwardly as an Islamist group at all; it was a pragmatic party of “services.” Erdogan’s transformation won him the admiration of liberals at home and abroad. It also caught the attention of another Islamic movement eager for power, one that followed the teachings of an imam named Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is a Muslim preacher who in the 1960s began promoting a Sufi-inspired vision of Islam and a strategy for leading a modern and religious life that offered his followers a path to success in Turkey. The stated goal was spreading an emphatically peaceful expression of Islam, but a central ambition was also the expansion of the movement, which required amassing followers and capital. The Gulenists, who prefer to be called sympathizers, describe themselves as nonpolitical, anti-violence, pro-business and deeply patriotic. Indeed, the movement advocates a specifically Turkish Islam. Unlike Milli Gorus, it rejects party politics; theirs is “cultural Islam,” its adherents say, a religion-based civic movement they call Hizmet, or Service. ... ... ... Mustafa Yesil, the president of the Journalist and Writers Foundation, an Istanbul-based public-relations arm for Gulen’s followers, argues that every citizen has the right to work in any sector of the society. “Mr. Gulen sees three problems in society: ignorance, conflict and poverty,” he said of the Gulenists’ ideals. “Hizmet supported A.K.P. based on the promise that A.K.P. would fight against the military tutelage, further the E.U. process and democratization and create a new civilian constitution.” Erdogan welcomed the movement’s international influence and media support. With its endorsements, he achieved real gains. He sidelined the military. ... ... ... Fundamentally, Gulenists disagreed with Erdogan’s political tactics. “Gulen doesn’t cultivate influence through top-down reforms,” says Hendrick, who lived among the Gulenists for more than a year while researching his book about Gulen. “They encourage social change by winning hearts and minds through media, through education and through competitive market performance.”<<<<<

Svante E. Cornell"...an inquiry into the religious and ideological environment informing Turkish political Islam. Turkish political Islam, and with it Turkish politics, is increasingly based on powerful religious orders and brotherhoods, collectively termed tarikat and cemaat, respectively. These communities constitute the deep structure of Turkish power, and share a common ideological source: they belong to, or stem from, the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order."See--> LINK . & - Excerpted in collapse bar:
 * 1) FGulen.com: "[Gulen's] trajectory itself symbolizes what we call a form of Turkish "cultural third way" that is neither Kemalism nor Islamism but a mix of "Turkishness", Islamic Sufi thought, and the appropriation of the Americanized globalization." ... ... ... "Gülen has always been against the application of the Shariah Islamic law by the State and considers the democracy as the best kind of government, accepting "Western civilization as a suitable foundation for material life while considering Islamic civilization suitable for spiritual life" (Aras and Çaha, 2000). In an interview in 1995 quoted by Kuru (2005: 265), he criticized anti-Western feelings: "Anti-Westernism should force us out of civilization". The only political positions he has consistently advocated have been: 1) the return to the relations of independence between the State and the religion as they were fairly maintained at the time of the Ottoman Empire -and that also exists today in most of the Western Democracy- and 2) the integration of Turkey to the European Union - which should secure religious freedom and a neat separation between the State and religion."
 * 2) Hudson Institute: "The Naqshbandi-Khalidi Order and Political Islam in Turkey," by

The impact of the order on Turkish society and politics far surpasses what is usually assumed; its ideas have exerted strong influence on numerous spinoff movements, including practically all of the politically relevant Islamic social movements in the country today. Almost all religious orders and communities in Turkey hail from the Khalidi order. The most well-known of them is the Iskenderpaşa lodge in Istanbul, which produced the Milli Görüş movement—the “National Outlook” movement created in the mid-1960s which produced Turkey’s Islamist political parties and was led by Necmettin Erbakan. But the Menzil, Nurcu (including the Fethullah Gülen community), the Süleymancı, and Işıkçı groupings, among others, also all trace their lineage to the order.

While the religious orders and schools saw their influence over politics and administration decline in the last century of the Ottoman Empire, they mostly maintained their influence on social life. Moreover, the duality between modern schools and madrassahs gave them a role in education. But with the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the sultanate and the caliphate were abolished. In 1924, the Law on Unification of Education (Tevhid-i tedrisat kanunu) similarly abolished all schools providing religious education. Following the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion in the east, led by a Naqshbandi sheikh, a November 1925 law closed all religious orders, lodges, and monasteries. This ended legal recognition of all religious orders. Furthermore, the transition to the Latin alphabet in 1927 curtailed the influence of religious figures on the state, and especially on the education system. This was not a coincidence: Atatürk and his followers explicitly sought to neutralize religious orders and brotherhoods, as well as the influence of their members.

Naturally, this radical revolutionary secular movement generated a backlash. The religious groups were forced underground and adapted their strategies to a long-term struggle. Especially in the eastern parts of the country, where government writ was weak, the Naqshbandi brotherhoods continued their activities surreptitiously.

... ... ...

While the Gülen movement is a Nurcu group, its sheer size and influence alone means it deserves separate treatment. Fethullah Gülen is the most prominent religious figure to emerge from the Nurcu movement. He began his activities in Izmir in the 1960s; at the time, a religious vacuum obtained, owing to decades of state policy. A generally more permissive environment had crept into Turkey as well. Gülen took advantage of this setting. His movement refers to itself as the Hizmet movement, literally meaning “service,” a term taken from Said Nursi’s concept of Hizmet-i imaniye ve Kur’aniye, or service to the faith and Quran. Its aims include the creation of a “golden generation” through education. Already in the movement’s first publication, Sızıntı magazine, Gülen urged his followers to focus on the education sector. The Işık evleri, or private student residences, were the first education institutions of the movement. This is where the Risale was taught in a programmatic and systematic manner. In 1982, as Özal facilitated the establishment of private educational institutions, Gülen moved to turn a student dormitory into his first school, the Yamanlar koleji in Izmir.

The number of schools grew rapidly over time, attracting particularly the children of conservative and center-right elites who sought a better education than the state could offer in a culturally conservative setting. In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union provided an opportunity to export this model to the predominantly Turkic-speaking states that had just gained their independence. Azerbaijan was the first among them, followed by Kazakhstan, where the movement rapidly built 29 schools. Today, the Hizmet movement runs an astounding 1,200 schools in 140 countries. Aside from schools, the movement has operated hundreds of preparatory courses for Turkey’s university entrance exam, as well as several universities, including the flagship Fatih University in Istanbul. The movement controls financial institutions such as Bank Asya and Asya Finans; a large business association, TUSKON; and a number of charitable organizations operating both in Turkey and abroad. It also controls a considerable media empire including Turkey’s largest-circulation newspaper, Zaman, as well as other newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations. Many pious followers of Fethullah Gülen, who explicitly reject the notion of political Islam, embody the compatibility and overlap of Islam and liberal democracy. In fact, for many of them, the former nourishes the latter.

The Hizmet movement stands out compared to most religious communities in Turkey for other reasons too. Generally, they take a pro-Western worldview. Gülen himself and his entourage reside in self-imposed exile in the United States, and their policy stances on international affairs differ greatly from the other orders. Indeed, if the private and social lives of Gülen followers differ little from other religious communities, their attitude toward the West does. They are generally pro-American and support Turkey’s European Union integration; even more uniquely, they appear largely devoid of the anti-Semitism that is entrenched in the other orders and movements. In this sense, they diverge considerably from the Naqshbandi-Khalidi movement’s roots.

As noted, the Gülen movement stayed away from electoral politics, focusing instead on increasing its presence in the state bureaucracy. The Hizmet movement’s considerable success in this regard would initially make it Erdoğan's main partner, but also his eventual nemesis.


 * 1) Institute for Security and Development Policy"...the main dynamic of Turkish politics is not a traditional left-right or even a secular-Islamic divide, but the struggle for power between two Islamic sects – Erdogan’s political party with origins in the Naqshbandi movement, and the Gülenists – who, until a few years ago, were allies in an effort to root out the traditional state establishment. Both Erdogan and Gülen represent slightly esoteric Sunni Muslim movements stemming from the same root, the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order."

Both Erdogan and Gülen represent slightly esoteric Sunni Muslim movements stemming from the same root, the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order (See article). As such, none of the deep theological divides in the Muslim world are at play. This is not the Sunni-Shi’a divide, nor is it the Salafi-Sufi animosity. It is not even the division between the modernists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra-Orthodox Takfiris. To a significant degree, it is simply a struggle for power. Yet there are subtle but profound differences between the two sides, which have implications for Turkey’s future.

Before 2001, the Gülen movement kept a clear distance from Erdoğan’s political Islamic milieu. The two developed a tactical alliance that may have been destined to collapse as soon as their common enemy was defeated.

Erdogan’s AKP was a face-lifted version of the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement that was born in the 1960s out of the Naqshbandi movement – an order that stands out for its Sunni orthodoxy, its anti-colonial and anti-western nature, and its politicization. Milli Görüş came to be heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, but it remained essentially parochial and closed. (See pp. 12-23 in Turkey Transformed) Most importantly, Milli Görüş never remotely had the manpower to run the Turkish state in a professional way.

That is where the Gülen movement came in. It draws from the Nurcu community, an offshoot from the Naqshbandi tradition. But the Nurcu movement’s founder, Said-i-Nursi, differed from the Naqshbandis in seeking to wed modernity and Islam, and in his acceptance of the republic. Fethullah Gülen built on that tradition, and developed it further: first, by focusing strongly on finding and pooling talent through educational institutions that provide secular learning in a religious setting; and second, by leaving the confines of Turkey and going global.

While Milli Görüş confronted the secular republic head on, Gülen adapted to – and even benefited from – it. Particularly after the 1980 military coup, which aimed to destroy the political left, the junta created the synthesis of Turkish nationalism and Sunni Islam as the ideological backbone of Turkish society. Milli Görüş was pan-Islamic and had little interest in Turkish nationalism, but the Gülen movement had a nationalist inclination too. Moreover, Milli Görüş was overtly political, while Gülen’s network was so only subtly, eschewing politics and focusing instead on developing its influence in the bureaucracy, in business circles and society. It became the primary beneficiary of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis”.

Notably, in 1996 Gülen kept his distance from Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey’s first overtly Islamist Prime Minister; in fact, his network subtly lent support to the centrist parties that were Erbakan’s rivals. Gülen also personally defended the military intervention that ousted Erbakan in 1997.

"'When my father was an imam at Alvar village, I learned how to read the Qur'an with the correct pronunciation and rhythm from Haci Sidki Efendi of Hasankale, our district. I did not have a place to stay in Hasankale, so I had to walk back and forth on the 7 to 8 km. road. My first Arabic teacher was my father. Later I was taught by Muhammed Lutfi Efendi's grandson, Sadi Efendi.'"
 * 1) FGulen.com:
 * 1) GulenMovement.com:

"His father, Ramiz Efendi, was an imam with close connections to the Nakshibendi tarikat in Erzurum. He taught Gülen both Persian and Arabic, and gave him entrée to the world of Islamic thinkers such as al-Hasan al-Basri, Harith al-Mu- hasibi, al-Ghazali, Jelaluddin Rumi, Ahmed Faruk Sirhindi, Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi. Gülen later came under the tutelage of (Alvarli) Muhammad Lütfi Efendi, a member in the Kadiri Sufi order who, according to Gülen, greatly influenced his intellectual development. ... ... ... Elisabeth Özdalga defines three reference points for Gülen’s thought—Sunni Islam, Nakshibendi Sufi traditions, and the Nurculuk movement."


 * 1) Democracy Journal: "Gülen is a Sufi mystic. Sufism emphasizes the individual’s need to polish his or her soul as part of the internal journey toward the divine. Religiously, the movement both reflects the long tradition of Turkish Sufi brotherhoods, and Gülen’s own emphasis on societal change through education, humanitarian activism, and interfaith dialogue. He never sympathized with, or adopted, the AKP’s more conservative form of political Islam which, on the other hand, has more in common ideologically with other transnational Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. But the rift between the two began in earnest when the Gezi Park protests erupted during the summer of 2013. Erdoğan’s forceful response to demonstrators trying to rescue Gezi Park—one of the few green spaces left in Istanbul—from development was widely criticized. Gülen and his supporters began to speak out, both against Erdoğan’s handling of that crisis as well as against his government’s repression of the press and his foreign policies toward Syria, which was already engaged in a civil war. In mid-November 2013, Erdoğan decided to close the country’s dershanes, or exam preparatory schools, many of which were connected to the GM, in retaliation."
 * 2) Pew Research Center: "In his early writings and public remarks, Fethullah Gülen at times defined his goal as cultivating a generation of well-educated elites in Turkey – cosmopolitan but also grounded in Islamic faith – that would be comfortable with allowing religion a more prominent place in Turkish society. For this reason, some of his critics have accused him of having a hidden political agenda and engaging in a gradualist strategy to undermine the secular foundations of the Turkish state.14 Possibly because of these concerns, Gülen has always been careful to try to emphasize his agreement with the secular, modernizing vision of Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic.15 In this way, he has sought to separate himself and his movement from more radical Muslim groups in Turkey. The Gülen movement has been criticized in the West from time to time, even by some who might otherwise laud its goals, because it tends to be guarded in providing specific information about its operations or allowing outsiders access to some of its facilities. As a result of this perceived lack of transparency, as well as lingering concerns that Gülen has a secret political agenda, some have come to view the movement and its work with varying degrees of suspicion.16"
 * 3) ConservativeDailyNews.com: "The network has a hierarchical structure that consists of many circles who work as small secretive cells. The cells all have a brother or a sister who leads the cell and the people in the cell are left in the dark about the work of the other cells. High ranking members communicate through code names."
 * 4) Middle East Policy Council: "The definition of Turk, for Gülen, is not limited to race or ethnicity….Those 'Muslims who live in Turkey, share the Ottoman legacy as their own, and regard themselves as Turks should be considered as Turks'. (57). In regard to the movement's approach to democracy, Yavuz stresses that, until the 1997 soft coup, Gülen was in favor of a strong state; afterward, he had a change of heart, as the Kemalist establishment directly targeted the movement. Since then, Gülen has felt the urge to strengthen civil society and expand freedoms. While Yavuz highlights Gülen's belief in the compatibility of Islam and democracy, he does not mention the role of Said-i Nursi in the formation of Gülen's thought on freedom, which Nursi regarded as a condition of faith. Yavuz criticizes the movement in two areas: first, despite Gülen's emphasis on individual reason, some of his followers have not developed critical thinking and have even openly opposed it.... . . . [T]he decision-making structure of the movement has three circles. The core includes Gülen, his few students and the elders. The majority in the core serve as top administrators, changing frequently according to need. The second circle includes donors and activists as well as mid- and low-level administrators, who organize local and state-level events. The largest circle, the third, includes a wide array of participants, both Muslims and non-Muslims. They may participate in the events of the movement according to their choosing. Akin to Sufi lodges, the events of the movement — from calligraphy to disaster-relief fundraising — are open to the public. Yavuz writes that the wealth and power the movement gained in the last decade turned it into a 'power network.' . . . Gülen's educational philosophy...regards science and morality as its two indispensable aspects. Gülen expects the 'golden generation' to mold these two facets into one. 'He stresses the unity of theological, spiritual, and scientific knowledge, yet at the center of this knowledge is the power and presence of God' (97)."
 * 5) Foreign Policy Research Institute: "... any independent, faith-based organization in Turkey would have cultivated a preference for some secrecy and discretion toward outsiders given the history of antagonistic relations between the state and religious groups. But with the electoral triumphs of the AKP in 2002 and 2007, the pious no longer needed to fear the scrutiny of secularists. Moreover, with the Gülen movement having grown into a global educational, media, and business empire, an embrace of greater transparency could have been expected. . . . The plea that American President Barak Obama uttered during the putsch for 'all sides to act within the rule of law' did not merely sound hopelessly silly—imploring violent mutineers to obey the law!—but its neutrality and implicit recognition of the mutineers as a party no less legitimate than the elected government they were seeking to overthrow came across as mischievously sly, even sinister."
 * 6) ForeignPolicy: "the Gulen movement used pre-existing religious conversation circles, known as sohbet, as a way to bring together business-minded religious people to trade and partner. In return, they were expected to donate money to the cause, a sort of premium for benefiting from the movement’s networks. Business associations, meanwhile, provided an institutionalized environment to sustain these meetings and functioned as a honeypot for prospective members. The more formalized these associations grew, the easier it became for the movement’s administrators to collect funds intended for welfare and service provision."
 * 7) GulenMovement.com: "Fethullah Gülen’s rejection of Islamism is not due to merely strategic considerations or even personal preference. Rather, it is based on the argument that the Islamist claims to have found political guidance in Scripture represent a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the Qur’an that dangerously distorts the believer’s approach to it."
 * 8) BBC: "Fethullah Gulen may be, as the former US ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey told me, Turkey's second most powerful man - an Islamic cleric who sits atop a movement with perhaps millions of followers, worth perhaps billions, with a presence, often through its high-achieving schools, in 150 countries."
 * 9) Loyola Univ.'s Joshua D. Hendrick in TheConversation.com: "the [Gülen movement (GM)] network provided social mobility for thousands of Turks in a variety of sectors. A quality education, gainful employment, social rank and prestige, and world travel were all rewards of participation. I frequently asked why Gülen was a subject of distrust and conspiracy in Turkey. GM followers dismissed such suspicions as fear-mongering. They explained that so-called secularists in Turkey were fearful of pious Muslims. Organizational opaqueness, they argued, was necessary to protect themselves from secular state repression. ... ... ... Gülen has not been able to deny the mass of circumstantial evidence linking his affiliates to the coup plot. His argument, however, is that this should implicate neither himself, nor the GM as a whole. Sincere or not, it must be underscored that the GM is organizationally defined both by obfuscation and hierarchy. That is, it is entirely plausible that if 'Gülenists' in Turkey’s military played a leading role in the events of July 15, 'Gülenists' in other sectors could have had no knowledge of it, or of any aspect of the GM’s alleged 'dark side.'"
 * 10) Daily Sabah, Istanbul: Gulen is "head of a controversial religious cult behind a coup attempt against Turkey's democratically elected government, sham trials, imprisonment of adversaries and infiltration of state institutions through exam fraud" . . . [with there being] "solid evidence of him directing the July 15, 2016, coup attempt . . . Almost all Turkish political parties and circles except for his own followers accuse Gülen and FETÖ [WPdian Hodgd.: Turk. acronym: Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü ("Fethullahist [allegedly] terror group")] of staging the coup attempt, in addition to leading a decades long campaign to turn Turkey into a theocratic regime governed by Gülen's own interpretation of Sunni Islam, which had a very narrow following among the public even when the shadowy group was at its strongest. . . . Many pundits in Turkey and abroad also accuse Gülen, who is frequently referred to as an authority in Islam in the U.S. and Western Europe, and his international network of schools and businesses of collaborating with the U.S. since the early 1980s to implement a religious theory known as "moderate Islam." The theory, which was among the methods used to contain the USSR at the time, was part of the formation of a "Green Belt" that included close relations with the Saudi hardliners and Afghan mujahideen. Following the end of the Cold War, Gülen's network rapidly expanded in Turkey's surrounding regions of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Middle East. . . . The judiciary and the police were FETÖ's primary focus, and once Gülen's followers gained control, they unleashed their wrath on their adversaries though sham trials based on fake evidence, illegal wiretappings and abuse of judicial and police powers. . . . FETÖ also disrupted the rule of law after launching two series of mass raids, dubbed as corruption operations, against the government and figures linked to their families in 2013. The operations on Dec. 17 and 25 were conducted through illegal wiretapping and evidence gathering while ignoring the state hierarchy. The operations, now widely described as the initial coup attempts by FETÖ, not only breached legal and ethical limits, but also damaged the actual fight on corruption through politicizing the judiciary and the police."
 * 11) Foreign Policy Research Institute re coup attempt by the so-called “Council for Peace at Home”:

In this startling essay on the attempted coup in Turkey, FPRI senior fellow and prize-wining Princeton historian Michael Reynolds shakes up the way we think about Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Fethullah Gülen, and the United States. He tells a tale of intra-Islamist intrigue in which a Turkish imam based in the Poconos allied himself with Erdoğan as part of a decades-long effort to capture the Turkish state from within. After having first neutralized their common opponents in the secular establishment through sham trials, the imam took on Erdoğan in a struggle that perhaps reached its denouement in the attempted coup of 15 July. With the rule of law in shambles and social trust in tatters, Turkish democracy and stability are in grave condition. By obliging Gülen and permitting him to reside in America, not only did Washington fail to promote democracy, Reynolds concludes, it may have actually helped to subvert and weaken—however inadvertently—the most important democracy in the Middle East.

On July 15, 2016, elements of the Turkish Armed Forces attempted to overthrow the elected government of Turkey and to capture or kill its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Calling themselves the “Council for Peace at Home” (Yurtta Sulh Konseyi), the mutineers moved into action just after 10:00 pm. They deployed tanks and infantry on key bridges in Istanbul; seized the state television channel TRT; took the chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Hulusi Akar, hostage in Ankara; dispatched a unit to hunt down Turkey’s president in the resort town of Marmaris; and employed fighter jets and attack helicopters to strike government targets, including the Turkish Parliament, the Special Operations Command, the General Security Directorate, and the headquarters of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, among others.

The rebels failed, however, to paralyze the government or Turkish society, and opposition swiftly emerged. Just a little over an hour after the operation began, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım appeared on television to inform the Turkish public that some sort of illegal intervention was underway and would be resisted. General Akar’s steadfast refusal to go along with the mutiny blocked the rebels from securing the passive support of the armed forces, and some loyal units in the armed forces and the police resisted outright. At roughly half past midnight, a visibly shaken but coherent President Erdoğan spoke through a smart phone on live television as he flew to Istanbul and called on the Turkish people to pour into the streets in protest against the putsch. The state Directorate of Religion played a notable role in this effort to rally support for the government by instructing Turkey’s 110,000 imams to use their minarets to broadcast a rarely used prayer to galvanize resistance to the putsch. Indeed, the notion of defending Islam motivated many, probably most, of those in the streets although it should be noted that opposition to the coup attempt spanned virtually the entirety of Turkey’s otherwise fractious political spectrum.

Loyal units ultimately suppressed the coup attempt, but not before much blood had been shed. Fighting lasted over the course of several hours and resulted in the deaths of 272 people, including 171 civilians, 63 police officers, 4 soldiers, and 34 rebels. Government authorities arrested or detained 17,184 military personnel, 6,066 police officers, 4,757 prosecutors, and 782 civilians. That this failed putsch amounted to a critical episode in Turkish history goes without saying. At the same time, by reflexively framing the mutiny within the Turkish Republic’s long history of military interventions—the country witnessed four successful military interventions between 1960 and 1997—analysts in the United States and elsewhere have greatly underestimated its significance for Turkey, its neighbors, and the U.S. The defeat of the putsch gives cause for only modest relief. Contrary to what many early accounts in the West intimated, the plotters mobilized over ten thousand armed men and demonstrated a chilling willingness to kill for their cause by opening fire on crowds, executing resisters, and mounting air strikes with jet fighters and attack helicopters on multiple targets. They were nothing like the feeble-hearted Communists who mounted a putsch against Gorbachev twenty-five years ago. Nor, however, was the Turkish population willing this time to sit passively. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. They were predominantly men, and, as noted above, they more often than not steeled themselves with a vision of religious struggle. Thus, had the mutineers succeeded in capturing or killing Erdoğan, winning over the Turkish military, and toppling the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP), the result would not have followed in the pattern of earlier coups in Turkey where a quick consolidation of military rule inaugurates a brief period of military governance followed by a voluntary transition back to democratic civilian governance. Instead, a successful putsch would almost certainly have triggered a civil war, and one that would have likely acquired a religious dimension. Turkey is already embroiled in a chronic and increasingly bitter struggle with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê or PKK) and another escalating fight against the Islamic State. Civil war would have converted Turkey from a buffer against refugee flows—Turkey is host to nearly 3 million refugees from Syria alone—to an exporter of refugees, which would have dire consequences for the political stability of a Europe already grappling with a dissolving European Union and surging populism.

Most significantly, the July 15 putsch did not represent a routine attempt by a secular Turkish officer corps to forcibly reset their country’s politics to a previous status quo. The putschists’ assumed name notwithstanding—“Peace at Home” comes from one of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s signature aphorisms—their bid for power represented, in fact, the latest battle in what has emerged as a fierce struggle for dominance between two rival wings of Turkey’s Islamists. The Turkish government calls the organization behind the failed mutiny the Fethullah Terror Organization (Fethullah Terür Örgütü or FETÖ). This label is unfortunate for two reasons. First, FETÖ bears no resemblance to any conventional terrorist organization insofar as up until July 15, it had not, to the best of my knowledge, employed violence as a means to affect or to sway public opinion along the lines of a typical terrorist organization like al Qaeda or the Islamic State. It has not conducted bombings, public assassinations, or hostage-takings. Second, FETÖ, arguably, threatens the integrity of the Turkish state and the health of Turkish democracy more insidiously than any terrorist group could hope. Whereas terrorists strike at the state from the outside in the hopes of disorienting and delegitimizing it, FETÖ penetrated the state from the inside and managed to take control of law enforcement agencies, the judiciary branch, and revenue agencies, among others. With total contempt for the law, they abused their positions and power in the state to destroy their enemies and any who would stand in their way.

FETÖ is named after Fethullah Gülen, a Turk and religious figure who presides over a network of schools, test centers, media outlets, banks, and businesses that spans five continents. Gülen has resided in the U.S. for the past 17 years. Here, his followers run, among other enterprises, approximately 140 charter schools that bring in an estimated annual income of $500 million from American taxpayers.

<<<<<"When it came to power, the inexperienced AKP found itself heavily dependent on Gülen for well-trained and skilled personnel for staffing government posts. Gülen and his followers, however, had their own ambitions, and those eventually came to include unseating Erdoğan. Gülen may have presented no electoral threat, but his followers were well organized and inside the government; outside the government, they had at their disposal abundant monetary and other resources, including the media. They had used their positions in the police and elsewhere inside the state to frame and jail several hundred military officers and others in the sensational Balyoz and Ergenekon trials between 2008 and 2012, and Erdoğan understood that there was no reason they could not do the same to him. Before the end of 2013, Erdoğan and Gülen were in open conflict, with Erdoğan moving to shut down Gülen’s network of profitable test preparatory centers, break his media empire, and uncover and expel his followers from within the government. Meanwhile, Gülen’s followers worked to bring down Erdoğan through revelations of corruption and through mobilizing international and domestic opinion against him." ... ... ... "Although a great deal remains unknown about the coup and what and how it transpired, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that senior members of the Gülen movement played key roles alongside elements of the Turkish officer corps. The coup did not fail for want of trying. The putschists employed substantial violence, killing nearly 200 civilians and 67 pro-government police officers and soldiers. Indeed, the vigorous response shown by Turkish civilians, heavily but not exclusively AKP supporters, to Erdoğan’s call to turn out in the streets in defiance of the putschists was the decisive element in defeating the attempted takeover. The defeat of the coup added another chapter to the legend of Erdoğan as the courageous defender of the people." ... ... ... "American officials would do well to reflect on the fact that by harboring Gülen with the goal of supporting “moderate Muslim democrats” and promoting the proliferation of democracy, America has already inflicted substantial, albeit inadvertent, damage to the leading democracy in the Muslim world and a former, rare pillar of stability in the Middle East. In the meantime, it has entangled itself to an unnecessary degree in a muddy intra-Islamist conflict in which it will always be at a severe disadvantage to understand and operate effectively. The sooner it drops the pretense that it understands the real interests of Turkey better than the Turkish citizens themselves, the better off we will all be."<<<<<
 * 1) Voice of America: "Fethullah Gulen stressed that he left Turkey 15 years ago and no longer knew who his supporters were in the country, but that he was unaware of any role in the coup attempt Friday by his followers. Gulen told VOA's Turkish Service Erdogan had falsely accused him, and that he wouldn't have returned to Turkey even if the coup had succeeded. He also suggested in the interview that the ruling party staged the attempted coup."
 * 2) Foreign Policy magazine: "Some of his Islamist detractors believe Gulen is a U.S.-funded mole in the religious establishment, trying to disrupt the ranks of political Islam from within; secularists fear he is a 'scheming crypto-Mullah, plotting to turn Turkey into a sharia-based Islamic state little different than Iran.'"
 * 3) Noam Chomsky interview in TruthOut: "relations between Erdogan’s regime and the West are becoming more tense and there is great anger against the West among Erdogan supporters because of Western attitudes toward the coup (mildly critical, but not enough for the regime) and toward the increased authoritarianism and sharp repression (mild criticism, but too much for the regime). In fact, it is widely believed that the US initiated the coup. The US is also condemned for asking for evidence before extraditing Gulen, who Erdogan blames for the coup. Not a little irony here. One may recall that the US bombed Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to turn Osama bin Laden over without evidence. Or take the case of [Emmanuel "Toto”] Constant, the leader of the terrorist force FRAPH [F[Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti]hat ran wild in Haiti under the military dictatorship of the early ’90s. When the junta was overthrown by a Marine invasion, he escaped to New York, where he was living comfortably. Haiti wanted him extradited and had more than enough evidence. But Clinton refused, very likely because he would have exposed Clinton’s ties to the murderous military junta."
 * 4) Commentary magazine: "John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, in contrast, embraces Gülen’s work and teaching and affirmed his sincerity. Several years ago, the New York Times reported on the controversy over assessments of Gülen, as has Der Spiegel. In my own writing, I have often been suspicious of the Gülen movement, although as I reflect, I realize I may have been misread the movement. While this post will be lengthy, the topic remains relevant and may be interesting to those focused on Islam and reform, and so I hope to address why I was suspicious, and why I have slowly been changing my mind."
 * 5) Gulen-penned op-ed (Le Monde, Feb. 2019) : "Giving sovereignty to the people does not mean usurping it from God, but rather taking the right and duty to govern, which is endowed to humans by God, from a dictator or an oligarchy and giving it back to the people. The 'state' is a system formed by human beings in order to protect their basic rights and freedoms and maintain justice and peace. The 'state' is not a goal by itself, but an agency that helps people pursue happiness in this world and in the afterworld. The alignment of the state with a set of principles and values is a sum of the alignment of the individuals who make up the system with those principles and values. Therefore, the phrase 'Islamic state' is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. Similarly, since there is no clergy class in Islam, theocracy is alien to the spirit of Islam. A state is a result of a contract among humans, made up of humans, and it can neither be 'Islamic' nor 'holy'. Democracies come in all shapes and sizes. The democratic ideal that underlies these forms, that no group has domination over the others, is also an Islamic ideal. The principle of equal citizenship is in alignment with acknowledging the dignity of every human being and respecting them as a work of art that was created by God."  --Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 13:24, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * 6) TheNewYorker:"In 2005, according to a cable written by Stuart Smith, an American diplomat, three senior members of the Turkish National Police visited the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, seeking a favor for Gülen. Three years earlier, Gülen, living in exile in the Poconos, had applied for permanent residence, claiming that he was an “exceptional individual” who deserved special consideration. The U.S. declined his application, on the ground that he was not an especially remarkable person and that he had exaggerated his credentials as a scholar. The policemen at the Consulate were pressing an appeal. Smith was skeptical. In his cable, published by WikiLeaks, he noted Gülen’s “sharply radical past as a fiery Islamist preacher” and the “cult-like obedience and conformity that he and the layers of his movement insist on in his global network of schools, his media outlets, and his business associations.” If anyone was being persecuted, he suggested, it was Gülen’s critics: “Given the Gülenists’ penetration of the National Police (TNP) and many media outlets, and their record of going after anyone who criticizes Gülen, others who are skeptical about Gülen’s intentions feel intimidated from expressing their views.” Despite such official American assessments, Gülen won his appeal, in part because influential friends wrote letters in his support. They included George Fidas, a former director of outreach for the C.I.A.; Morton Abramowitz, a former American ambassador; and, perhaps most notably, Graham Fuller, a former senior C.I.A. official."... ... ..."Western officials told me that they regarded the investigation as a Gülenist attempt to topple Erdoğan’s government—but that the evidence seemed credible. As the investigation gathered force, four of Erdoğan’s ministers resigned. One of them, Erdoğan Bayraktar, called on Erdoğan to quit, saying, “The Prime Minister, too, has to resign.” Instead, Erdoğan struck back. He denounced the investigation as a “judicial coup” and enacted a wholesale reorganization of the country’s criminal-justice system, forcing out thousands of police, prosecutors, and judges linked to the Zarrab case. Ardıç, the police chief who headed the investigation, was removed from the case and later imprisoned. Ultimately, the bribery charges were dropped."--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 02:20, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
 * 7) NewYorker:

Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher who oversees a worldwide religious and educational organization. Şık describes the rise of the Gülen movement, from its beginnings in the Mediterranean port of Izmir, in the nineteen-seventies, and what he describes as its current efforts to infiltrate and control the police forces. Gülen is considered one of Erdoğan’s most powerful allies but is reviled and feared by much of Turkey’s population. Born in either 1938 or 1941—publications distributed by his organization cite both dates—Gülen fled to the United States in 1999, as Turkish authorities were preparing to arrest him, for “trying to undermine the secular system.” He now lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, in the Poconos, and has emerged as the leader of one of the world’s most important Islamic orders, surpassed only by the Muslim Brotherhood in its reach and influence. His public message, in the books and glossy pamphlets his acolytes distribute, is almost entirely apolitical, but his critics suspect that his ambitions are deeply political.

Gülen’s followers operate a network of schools in a hundred and thirty countries. They also run a network of for-profit college-prep courses, which some Turks say earns tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. (A prominent Gülenist in Turkey told me that the courses were not that profitable.) Turkish businessmen donate money to build Gülenist schools in countries whose markets they are trying to enter, and the schools serve as beachheads of good will. According to the movement’s followers, Turkish businessmen who are Gülenists often make deals with one another, sometimes in Turkey, sometimes in faraway lands that have nonexistent or weak governments. In person, Gülenists often come across as amalgams of Dale Carnegie and Christian missionaries: clean-cut, polite, and relentlessly cheerful.

In Turkey, Gülen’s followers own the newspaper Zaman and the TV channel Samanyolu, which editorialize on behalf of the A.K. Party and the Ergenekon prosecutions. (While Erdoğan himself is not believed to be a Gülenist, President Gül is said to be one, as are several other senior members of the government.) Gülen is thought to have between two and three million followers in Turkey, including as many as sixty members of parliament—about ten per cent of the total.

The Gülenists insist that the organization is too diffuse to function as a political movement. But many Turks say that the Gülenists have ambitions and that these may or may not include Erdoğan. A former member of parliament who was once a confidant of Erdoğan’s told me that, in 1999, he met Gülen in Pennsylvania. Gülen, he said, told him that he had a twenty-five-year plan to take control of the Turkish state, and that this would be accomplished by a group of followers he referred to as “the Golden Generation.” “There isn’t any question that Gülen wants political power,” the former legislator told me. (A spokesman for Gülen denied that he had ever advocated “regime change.”)

The most widely held perception in Turkey is that the Gülenists have taken control of the Turkish National Police—and that they are behind the arrests in the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases. James Jeffrey, a former Ambassador to Turkey, wrote in a cable to Washington, revealed by WikiLeaks, that at least part of that proposition appeared to be true: “The assertion that the T.N.P. is controlled by the Gülenists is impossible to confirm, but we have found no one who disputes it.”

Gülen has cultivated some powerful friends in the United States. When U.S. officials were trying to expel him to face criminal charges in Turkey, he was able to call on Graham Fuller, a former senior official in the C.I.A., to help him remain. When he applied for permanent residency, Morton Abramowitz, another former Ambassador to Turkey, wrote a letter on his behalf. Fuller’s relationship with Gülen, in particular, has prompted conspiracy theories in Turkey about the C.I.A.’s involvement in Gülen’s rise.

suspended more than 130,000 civil servants from their jobs, arrested or imprisoned more than 80,000 citizens, and closed more than 1,500 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on terrorism-related grounds since the coup attempt, primarily for alleged ties to cleric Fethullah Gulen and his movement, accused by the government of masterminding the coup attempt, and designated by the Turkish government as the “Fethullah Terrorist Organization” (“FETO”). Human rights issues included reports of arbitrary killing, suspicious deaths of persons in custody; forced disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest and detention of tens of thousands of persons, including opposition members of parliament, lawyers, journalists, foreign citizens, and three Turkish-national employees of the U.S. Mission to Turkey for purported ties to “terrorist” groups or peaceful legitimate speech; political prisoners, including numerous elected officials and academics; closure of media outlets and criminal prosecution of individuals for criticizing government policies or officials; blocking websites and content; severe restriction of freedoms of assembly and association; restrictions on freedom of movement; and violence against women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons, and members of other minorities.
 * 1) ESPN: Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think-tank, told E:60 that the Turkish government has yet to provide concrete evidence of Gulen's involvement in the coup attempt. 'There really is no direct evidence that Fethullah Gulen himself gave the order,' Cook says. 'It certainly stands to reason that Gulenist-affiliated, or followers of Gulen within the military, took part in the attempted coup. All of the evidence that has come out in trials in Turkey are suspect, because there are serious allegations that these are confessions that were made under extreme pressure. And there's been no independent investigation in Turkey.'"
 * 2) NordicMonitor.com: "... the intelligence agency, run by Erdoğan confidant and pro-Iranian figure Fidan, was transformed into a tool of repression that went after unsuspecting citizens when it should have been pursuing armed jihadist groups that were mushrooming in Turkey and its neighborhood. Here are some of the examples from the secret Turkish intelligence files. An intelligence note about defendant Adem Özdemir says he stayed at a popular resort hotel, the Asya Thermal Holiday Village in Ankara’s Kızılcahamam district Feb. 14-18, 2010. The hotel was managed by Turkish firm Nil Yönetim Hizmet Emlak Turizm Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş., whose majority shares were owned by Bank Asya, a banking and finance group that was close to the Gülen movement. The Asya Thermal Holiday Village, famous for its thermal waters and health and spa treatments, included a 5-star hotel with 94 rooms and 200 beds and 494 luxury time-share units, swimming pools, a shopping mall, a culture center and a congress center. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) used to hold its annual conventions at this resort until it discontinued the practice in 2014. If Özdemir’s stay at this resort was to be considered a crime, all Cabinet members and AKP lawmakers including Erdoğan himself must be considered suspects...."
 * 3) US Department of State's 2019 human rights report: >>>>By year’s end, authorities had dismissed or
 * 1) NationalReview: "The Gulen movement has been debated for decades now. 'A complicated beast, very large, very diffuse.' That is an observation of Nate Schenkkan, a Turkey-watcher at Freedom House. Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power 16 years ago, in 2003. For a time, the Gulenists were in alliance with him and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). This was, at least, a tactical alliance. It was always uneasy."
 * 2) Ahval (Turkish/Arabic&English online news website blocked inside Turkey): "The Gülen movement is also reviled by many opposition Turks due to its members’ infiltration of state institutions, and their use of positions in the judiciary and security forces to pursue secularist officers in a series of show trials. This took place in the period before 2013 when the AKP and the Gülenists were considered allies. 'Evidence, including confessions, that a cabal of Gülen’s followers are behind cases such as Ergenekon, Sledgehammer and the Izmir Spying Ring is now so extensive as to be irrefutable,' Turkey scholar Gareth Jenkins said of the movement in 2013."
 * 3) RT Documentary: "Turkish, Russian and German academics who have studied Gulenism explain the imam’s strategy to grow a “Golden Generation”, a moral and professional elite that would infiltrate every sphere of society. They analyse the appeal to educated Muslims of his “secular" and even "technocratic" version of Islam, which brought the values of Hizmet, or service, to the workplace."
 * 4) Asia Times: >>>>>...once Erdogan and Gulen defeated their common enemies, they turned against each other. Erdogan won this fratricide within the Islamist camp by forming a nationalist coalition with remnants of the deep state and with ultra-nationalists. After 16 years in power, Erdogan has proved himself to be a Machiavellian survivor who successfully transformed the deep state’s secularist threat perception. Political Islam, in today’s Turkey, is no longer perceived as a threat. This is because Erdogan infused his religious conservatism deep into Turkish nationalism. As a result, long gone are the days when the headscarf was seen as a harbinger of an Islamist revolution. With Islam now internalized within the political system, what remains an existential threat to the deep state is Kurdish nationalism....<<<<<
 * 5) Egypt Independent: "Fethullah Gülen Interview" - Host of the TeN satellite channel, Nashat al-Dehi, interviewed Turkish opposition leader Muhammed Fethullah Gülen - transcript --Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 06:23, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 6) Stamford, Connecticut Advocate: "Reid Weingarten, an attorney for Gulen, said he would find it disturbing if Giuliani was pressing for the cleric's return to Turkey on the heels of Flynn's efforts. 'We have argued aggressively and I thought persuasively to both the Obama and Trump Justice Departments that the allegations against Gulen are false and that any effort to extradite him would fail legally and factually and would be an embarrassment to the United States,' he said in a statement."

Recent revision
As per the discussion at User talk:JzG, are you OK with the WP:EDITORIAL and MOS:PUFF being reverted from this? KasimMejia (talk) 11:58, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , your logical fallacy is: begging the question. Do feel free to propose specific changes for discussion, though. Guy (help!) 12:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Your logical fallacy is to Refusing to Answer a simple yes or no question and waste users time. I'll ask again. Do you support reverting your revert in parts where the word said is replaced with the word noted and argued, per WP:EDITORIAL and the removal of the section "considered best" per MOS:PUFF. KasimMejia (talk) 12:03, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Guy is correct in this case. -Roxy, the dog. Esq . wooF 12:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , The "simple yes or no question" was not a simple yes or no question as it embodied the assumption that you are correct in your analysis of all parts of your edit. Said --> noted should be OK, "considered best" is fine as it's in the cited source as a statement of fact: "We went to Turkey to learn more and found Gulen's schools are everywhere and considered the best." If you want to WP:ATT this - "according to CBS News, they are considered..." or similar, be my guest. Guy (help!) 12:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:EDITORIAL says the word "noted" should be avoided as it implies that the statement is correct, so why do you think its OK to keep it? Also it is not CBS News who consider Gulen schools to be the best, CBS says that "everywhere they are considered the best" without stating who it is that makes the consideration of being best.
 * As for the part about "claims" and "allegations", does WP:CLAIM and MOS:ACCUSED advise against the use of these words as they are non neutral? Should be replaced by neutral words like "said" or "stated". KasimMejia (talk) 12:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , I have no idea why you are tying yourself in these intellectual knots. You removed "In Turkey, Gülen's schools are considered among the best: expensive modern facilities and English language is taught from the first grade. " That text is sourced adequately, but I said that if you want to reflect this as the judgment of the CBS report rather than a statement of fact, per WP:ATT, you're free to do so. Guy (help!) 14:37, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I am surprised by your continued ability to discuss, yet only partly answer each question in row, sometimes refusing to answer and linking Aristotle articles. I'll ask again. Since, WP:CLAIM states that the words "claim, accuse allege" be avoided, unless claim is proven false, would you be so kind to self revert? Sometimes, you refuse to answer, partly answer, or tell me it'd be a bad idea to revert your edit since this wasn't discussed . I don't know how I am suppose to reach any discussion with you. KasimMejia (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , Or you could suggest changes we can discuss in detail rather than lecturing vastly more experienced editors on Wikipedia policy. Guy (help!) 17:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * That's what I've been attempting to do ever since I messaged you at your talk page. Better late than never I suppose. I suggest, as previously suggest, "claim accused and alleged" for each use, be changed to said. Which is a neural language. There are countries who said these "Turkey, Pakistan" then there are those who deny "US, EU" so the tone, should be neutral: "said". Otherwise it's giving more credibility to one side than the other and is not neutral to use the words, "claimed and accused". KasimMejia (talk) 06:42, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , You may think you have, but in fact you have not. You have pointed at specific elements and then arm-waved. Some oft he changes you want to make, I have addressed above, where you have been specific. Example: you entirely removed the sentence on Gulen schools being considered best in Turkey while leaving the rebutting negative comment from competing teachers. That violates NPOV. The text you removed is supported exactly in the source cited.
 * The overall tone of your edit and your commentary is to suggest that you are a pro-Erdogan Turkish nationalist. That's not a good look. Guy (help!) 09:13, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I take it as a baseless accusation for you to call me a pro-Erdogan and Turkish nationalist. If you take a look at my past edits, including the one you've accused me of, you'll notice that I changed not only weasel words regarding Turkish side but all sides. Because I am replacing the words "claim accused alleged" per the rules WP:CLAIM to improve the readability and neutrality of these articles.
 * Meanwhile, you have yet again not answered my question despite being asked several times, I don't know whether you'll respond this time but here it goes again. I suggest, as previously suggest, "claim accused and alleged" for each use, be changed to said. Which is a neural language. There are countries who said these "Turkey, Pakistan" then there are those who deny "US, EU" so the tone, should be neutral: "said". Otherwise it's giving more credibility to one side than the other and is not neutral to use the words, "claimed and accused". KasimMejia (talk) 09:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , Read again. The overall tone was to suggest that. I make no judgment as to whether it's true or not. Now focus on specifics: "change X to Y based on Z source". Start with the fact that removing the statement about the schools won't fly. Guy (help!) 10:46, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Not surprising that I didn't get a full answer. Alright, leave the statement about the schools then, with an update on "according to CBS news". Now, what is your comment on, asking again: I suggest, as previously suggest, "claim accused and alleged" for each use, be changed to said. Which is a neural language. There are countries who said these "Turkey, Pakistan" then there are those who deny "US, EU" so the tone, should be neutral: "said". Otherwise it's giving more credibility to one side than the other and is not neutral to use the words, "claimed and accused". KasimMejia (talk) 10:55, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , as every, you are begging the question and waving away specifics. I don't support a general principle of replacing alleged with said, because in some cases they may be making an allegation or accusation, which is different from making a statement. English has multiple words with overlapping meanings, each bringing different nuance. Guy (help!) 13:29, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Why include his address?
Many articles give residences of living people to the city or neighbourhood level (e.g. Barack Obama in Kalorama_(Washington,_D.C.)). But giving the exact street number strikes me as disturbing, like a not-so-subtle invitation for stalkers or worse. - Nichlemn (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 January 2020
despite such informal religious instruction being banned by the Kemalist government.

Kemalist government did not ban the religious people to continue their belief and Kuran to be teached. Kemalist movement banned the any form of religious belief to be in interaction with politics and government. 195.175.104.242 (talk) 12:02, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

There are many false information about him
1. His name is "Fetullah Gülen". Not "Muhammed Fethullah Gülen". In his book his name is written as "M.Fethullah Gülen" and that "M" letter refers "Mehdi" and "Messiah". His followers believe that he is Messiah. 2. He is an active terrorist leader, he and his "hizmet" movemement attempted a military coup against Turkish legitimate government and killed at least 300 innocent people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.93.8.79 (talk) 18:50, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

M doesn't means Messiah, it means "Muhterem" or "Muhammed". And other things you said are probably correct but this is a neutral platform. Ömer Kayım (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

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 * Fethullah Gulen.jpg