In yet another example of scapegoating the Gülen movement for anything bad in Turkey or in anywhere else in the world, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief advisor Yiğit Bulut hinted at connections between FETÖ and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.
While critics say that Gülen is at best a cult figure, he is considered by many the legitimate spiritual leader of an Islamic movement that is focused on humanitarian service – hence the common name Hizmet – as well as interfaith dialogue and education.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) will revoke the citizenship of followers of the faith-based Gülen movement who sought refuge abroad due to a government crackdown on alleged movement sympathizers if they do not return to Turkey within a certain period of time, the pro-government Sabah daily reported on Thursday.
Erdoğan was born to a relatively poor family in Rize, along the Black Sea. His father was in the coast guard and worked at sea. Erdoğan at one point even sold snacks on the street to make extra cash. He graduated from a religious school in 1973, and immediately embarked on a political career, eventually becoming first mayor of Istanbul. So here’s the question: How did a man like Erdoğan become a billionaire several times over?
“It’s a kind of civil death,” Kerem Altiparmak, a human rights lawyer and political science professor at Ankara University told Los Angeles Times on Wednesday when describing how the lives of thousands of people change after the July 15 coup attempt.
Turkey’s infamous mob boss Alaattin Çakıcı implied in a letter to the Justice Ministry that his mafia network could kill Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen in Pennsylvania and his senior followers elsewhere in the world. Çakıcı’s letter came weeks after Turkey’s controversial request that the US extradite Gülen.
Mehmet Barlas, a columnist from the pro-government Sabah daily who is known as a staunch supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claimed in his column on Wednesday that US President Barack Obama could be an “imam” of the faith-based Gülen movement in Washington.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has prohibited individuals in Silivri Prison who are currently under arrest over their alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement from communicating with the outside world during an ongoing state of emergency, the Sözcü daily reported on Monday.
Speaking in his Black Sea hometown of Rize on Saturday, Erdoğan repeated his unsubstantiated accusations against the Gülen movement, calling its sympathizers “terrorists.” Erdoğan urged these people under persecution to become citizens of the countries in which they are living, saying that “they will not be considered citizens of this country.”