Chief General Eduardo Año: We don’t consider Gulen movement a terror group


Date posted: July 18, 2017

Trisha Macas / Philippines

Armed Forces chief General Eduardo Año has confirmed that the movement linked to Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen is not labeled as a terror group.

Interviewed by reporters in Malacañang, Año said organizations in the Philippines linked to the Gulen movement have been helping people.

“Well, the Fethullah Gulen movement is—we do not consider that as a terrorist group. Right now, their activities here are helping the community,” he said.

The clarification was issued after Turkish Ambassador Esra Cankorur claimed that those groups work like sleeper cells.

“So probably iyong ambassador ng Turkey, may sarili siyang basis kung bakit niya sinabi iyan because—I think you know what happened in Turkey, there was an attempted coup and they believe this coup was staged or inspired by this Fethullah Gulen movement,” Año said.

“But that is an internal affair of Turkey. We do not want to be entangled with that,” he added.

Also on Tuesday, former Education Secretary and De La Salle Philippines president Bro. Armin Luisto and other religious groups expressed support to two non-government organizations being linked to terrorist organizations, noting the NGOs’ track records in peace-building.

“I have never had any reason to link their operations here with alleged terror groups locally as this would seem totally in conflict with their on-going advocacies and programs on peace-building,” Luistro said in a statement.

He was referring to Integrative Center for Alternative Development Foundation, Inc. (ICAD) and Pacific Dialogue Foundation, Inc. (PDF), which run the Filipino-Turkish Tolerance School in Zamboanga City and the Fountain International School in San Juan City, both of which were linked by Turkish Ambassador to the Philippines Esra Cankorur to the Fethullah Gulen Movement, a supposed terrorist organization.

Source: GMA News Online , July 18, 2017

Tags: | | | |


Related News

Albania deports Gülen follower at Turkey’s request despite court rejection of extradition

Albanian authorities on Wednesday deported Harun Çelik, a Turkish teacher at a school affiliated with the faith-based Gülen movement in Albania, to Turkey despite a court order releasing him from his five-month incarceration over an extradition request from Ankara.

Tamsil: The inadvertent overspill of internalization

Gülen says, “Where you are [your ego], He is not; where you are not [your ego], He is.” In the Naqshibandi Sufi order there are four steps to reaching spiritual enlightenment “forget [forsake] the world, forget the [rewards of] the afterlife, forget your ego, forget [all these acts of] forgetting,” lest being conscious of them risks making one proud. So forgetting, or in the case of tamsil, not being aware of or intending to show or guide from the outset is key.

Stuttgart police: ‘Boycotts of Gülen-friendly shops are potential hate crimes’

Police in Germany are investigating whether calls to boycott shops owned by supporters of the self-exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen constitute hate crimes. There are currently 15 open investigations. Police in the southern German city of Stuttgart said Wednesday they were investigating calls to avoid patronizing Gülen-friendly stores, shops and restaurants as potential hate crimes.

The Islamic roots of the conflict in Turkey

he roots of the Gülen movement go back to Said Nursi (1878-1960), a preacher from Eastern Anatolia whose teachings (the Nurcu movement) emphasized the compatibility of Islam with rationalism, science and positivism. Nursi’s main contribution to Islam was a 6,000-page commentary he wrote on the Quran. This body of work is known as the “Risale-i Nur” (The Light Collection) and advocates the teaching of modern sciences in religious schools as the way of the future for an Islamic age of enlightenment.

UNESCO Global Monitoring Report and Turkish Schools

The Turkish schools around the world offers practical perspectives and practices in redefining “the human” and his needs, reintegrating him into society, overcoming the physical and methodological obstacles to education and leading a robust performance in the path to global peace. Although the report correlates the education crisis at first glance with poverty and social background, education remains as the number-one problem, in a varying extent, in the developed countries as well. What needs to be done is to convey how the Turkish schools are tackling or minimizing many educational problems and, finally, to find out what aspects of the schools’ methods can apply to public schools.

Kenyan president hails Gülen-inspired schools in his country

Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta has praised the schools run in his country by the Hizmet (Service) network, backed by U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen who is in severe rift with the Turkish government.

Latest News

Turkish inmate jailed over alleged Gülen links dies of heart attack in prison

Message of Condemnation and Condolences for Mass Shooting at Bondi Beach, Sydney

Media executive Hidayet Karaca marks 11th year in prison over alleged links to Gülen movement

ECtHR faults Turkey for convictions of 2,420 applicants over Gülen links in follow-up to 2023 judgment

New Book Exposes Erdoğan’s “Civil Death Project” Targeting the Hizmet Movement

European Human Rights Treaty Faces Legal And Political Tests

ECtHR rejects Turkey’s appeal, clearing path for retrials in Gülen-linked cases

Erdoğan’s Civil Death Project’ : The ‘politicide’ spanning more than a decade

Fethullah Gülen’s Vision and the Purpose of Hizmet

In Case You Missed It

Pak-Turk schools hold graduates moot

Take protests seriously, work to solve problems, Fethullah Gülen urges

Real Islam can eliminate radical groups in Islamic world, say analysts

TURKISH FOUNDATION HIT IN ARSON GETS POLICE PROTECTION; 2ND GROUP VICTIMIZED

Zaman school [in Cambodia] resists call for closure

The Hizmet Movement and Solutions to Today’s Problems

Turkish gov’t pays cash rewards for arrest or death of Gülen supporters

Copyright 2026 Hizmet News