“We’re very concerned about his safety,” said Reid Weingarten, a member of Gülen’s legal team, at a press conference on Friday in Washington DC. Weingartern repeated Gülen’s denials that he was involved in the attempted coup attempt and suggested that the Turkish government’s evidence will fall far short of American legal standards. “For Mr Gülen to be involved, he would have to be acting inconsistent with everything he’s done his entire adult life,” he said.
Although ordinarily I respect his cool-headedness and self-control, in hindsight I wish President Obama had been equally blunt in responding to President Erdoğan’s demands that the US extradite Fethullah Gülen. All of his demands, beginning in 2014 and vigorously renewed in the wake of the July 15 attempted coup, have been completely illegitimate and unfair.
From his self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, Gulen has disavowed any association with the coup attempt. “My philosophy — inclusive and pluralist Islam, dedicated to service to human beings from every faith — is antithetical to armed rebellion,” Gulen wrote for The New York Times.
Turkish government anger with the Gulen movement, over its alleged involvement in the failed July 15 coup, has spread to Africa. Governments are being pressured into closing down Gulen schools. Children are romping around the school grounds apparently without a care in the world. A few of them are standing together and reciting in unison […]
A Muslim religious leader, Fehullah Gulen, is daily in the news, as Turkish president Erdogan accuses him of plotting the recent coup, calling him a terrorist. We are so used to Muslim clerics being or being considered terrorists that we give the matter little thought.
LOUISE CALLAGHAN To plan a speedy political exile from Turkey today, you need two things: a world map and the Wikipedia page on “visa entry requirements for Turkish citizens.” If you get out a highlighter and start cross-referencing the two, you’ll quickly see the bottom half of the map is more accessible than the top. […]
“The business world is where they are the strongest. We will cut off all business links, all revenues of Gulen-linked business. We are not going to show anyone any mercy,” Erdogan said, describing the detentions so far as just the tip of the iceberg. The Turkish authorities had already seized a bank, taken over or closed several media companies, and detained businessmen on allegations of funding the cleric’s movement ahead of the failed coup attempt.
The Turks need to be reminded that Mr. Gulen has a legal right to be in the United States, and that the Justice Department would have to go through a rigorous process before deciding whether he could be handed over, especially to a country where due process is increasingly unlikely and torture is reportedly used against detainees.
Working towards this vision of the world, the Gulen Movement focus primarily in three areas: creating high achieving educational institutions from elementary schools to universities; establishing interfaith dialogue organizations where leaders from different religions as well as public official come together to find and share common grounds at a local and international level; and providing emergency relief in disaster areas around the world.
Students and parents at the Turkish-affiliated Pribadi Bilingual boarding school in Depok, West Java, have filed objections over a recent statement from the Turkish Embassy in Jakarta that referred to the school as having links with a terrorist organization.
It is vital for Washington and Turkey’s other international partners now to use all their influence to press Ankara to reverse course, to safeguards the rights of those caught up in the purge, and to strengthen rather than weaken the independence of the institutions that underpin it, including the courts, media, universities and parliament itself. The people who died defending it deserve nothing less.
In my research, I have been on the inside living with his followers while teaching English at one of the schools. Religion is not taught. It is not in the curriculum. The idea that these are jihadist madrases, or that Gülenists are extremists or terrorists is beyond absurd as anyone who knows them will attest.
Only rarely in modern history has a leader detained and fired as many perceived adversaries as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has since a failed coup attempt last month. Here is how Mr. Erdogan’s vast purge would look if Americans were targeted at a similar scale.
I am a lawyer, I am man of law but according to President Erdogan I am a “terrorist” who attempted for a coup! I am writing this letter from a city in Eastern Europe as I had to run away from persecution. Just after my departure on 22 July, Turkish police arrived at my house but could not find me. Instead, with the intention to bring me out they have decided to detain my mother who is 86 years old and can barely walk.