BBC Interviews Fethullah Gulen (Powerful but reclusive Turkish cleric)
Date posted: January 27, 2014
Tim Franks – BBC Newshour, Pennsylvania
– Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour, Fethullah Gulen said: “It is not possible for these judges and prosecutors to receive orders from me.”
– Fethullah Gulen has been called Turkey’s second most powerful man. He is also a recluse, who lives in self-imposed exile in the US.
– But now, the BBC has had exclusive access to the Muslim cleric. I travelled with Guney Yildiz from the BBC Turkish Service to a remote part of Pennsylvania to meet the man.
– In the interview, Mr Gulen denied using his influence to start investigations into alleged corruption among senior members of Mr Erdogan’s AK Party which have led to a number of police commissioners being sacked and to some of Mr Erdogan’s allies being arrested.
– 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.
– “It is not possible for these judges and prosecutors to receive orders from me. I have no relation with them. I don’t know even 0.1% of them.”
Click the source link below to read the entire story.
Gülen fine after being briefly hospitalized for arrhythmia
According to the statement made by herkul.org — a website that usually publishes Gülen’s speeches –, Fethullah Gülen was taken to hospital after suffering from heart rhythm abnormality, caused by sudden high blood pressure. After being taken home following medical observation, Gülen received a telephone call from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who expressed to him his best wishes.
Zephyrs from the Presence, the latest book by Ahmet Kurucan…
The book, Huzurdan Esintiler (Zephyrs from the Presence), published by Işık (Light) Publications in 2012, is a total of 216 pages. The author collected the articles he had previously written for Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper, and his new articles in this book. The shared subject of these articles written in various occasions is Fethullah Gulen. In this article of both presentation and criticism I will attempt to underline these two matters: Firstly, how does Kurucan describe the conversational environment with Gulen, and secondly, how exactly does the author illustrate Gulen’s portrait?
Take protests seriously, work to solve problems, Fethullah Gülen urges
Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has urged that the protests that have gripped Turkey for nearly 10 days not be underestimated or ignored, adding that “we share the blame” for the unrest. Gülen also urged restraint and patience from his followers and said “our duty is to work to rehabilitate hearts.” Gülen frequently used “we” in a […]
Analysis: Power of Turkey’s Fethullah Gulen
PM Erdogan accuses Hizmet supporters within the state of plotting a “coup” against the government. But the scale of the upheaval in the police, judiciary, Turkish state TV and other parts of the bureaucracy is already similar to what happens in a coup. The current Erdogan-Gulen stand-off is reminiscent of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s hostile relations with Said-i Nursi, a politically active Kurdish preacher in the formative years of the Turkish Republic.
Which is the bigger threat, Turkey’s coup or Erdogan’s response?
Erdogan’s counter-coup may do more to change Turkish politics than the coup plotters ever sought, completing the country’s transformation from secular democracy to what’s fast becoming the new favorite government for aspiring dictators — one where the media is strictly controlled, conformity is entrenched through the schools, elections bring little change, and presidents can rule for life.
‘The Gulen movement is one of the very few that has managed to live what it preaches.’
Hizmet Movement is, in my view, an Islamically-inspired, Islamically-grounded movement, or Islamically-rooted movement, founded on the universal and fundamental principle of peace and—the essential values of Islam—peace, mercy and compassion, as normative, moral objectives and which seeks to translate these principles into—through the dynamic of ta’aruf, the dynamic of coming to know one another, especially coming to know the other—into a reality, into a living sociological and anthropological reality.
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