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.
Written Evidence to UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Hizmet
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Turkey Heads Toward Radical Islamic Dictatorship
Thousands have been arrested. Civil rights are suspended. People are jailed with no way to consult lawyers or present a defense. The coup has become an excuse for Erdoğan to purge state institutions, and even the private sector, of his critics, regardless of their guilt with regard to the insurrection. The Turkish government — and a 100% state-controlled media — has accused the U.S. government of being behind the coup attempt itself and harboring its purported mastermind, Fetullah Gulen.
Compensation case filed against Erdoğan for targeting Gülen-inspired schools
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GYV President Mustafa Yeşil answers questions about the Gulen movement
March 26, 2013 Hizmet does not expect anything from the political authorities. Our only expectations are that the EU process must be kept alive and democratization must be achieved; that rights and freedoms are improved; that the ongoing fight against military tutelage is completed; and that the new constitution materializes. We do not even want […]
‘If you are against us, you are the other’
Turkey has been witnessing a rigorous debate for the last couple of weeks over the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) vow to finish off the test prep schools, which are a source of both money and influence for its old ally, the Hizmet Movement led by the self-exiled leader, Fethullah Gülen. Like many controversies in Turkey, the issue of closing the courses and integrating them into Turkey’s poorly-established and -organized education system was not only about the prep schools, which was only the tip of the iceberg.
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