
A year later, Western intelligence officials and top Turkey analysts aren’t nearly so sure of Gulen’s complicity. Earlier this year, German spy chief Bruno Kahl revealed that Ankara has failed to convince the BND foreign intelligence agency that Gulen was behind the ill-planned and executed coup plot. “Turkey has tried to convince us of that at every level, but so far it has not succeeded,” Kahl told the German weekly Der Spiegel in March.

Barış Yurtseven, the pilot of the plane that brought Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to İstanbul on the night of a failed military coup attempt last July, was fired from Turkish Airlines in February over alleged links to the Gülen movement.

Dr Ismail Sezgin, Director of Centre for Hizmet Studies is questioning if a genocide is in the making in Turkey, exploring the development of a genocidal action stage by stage by the Turkish government against the Hizmet movement.

US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has denied once more Turkish authorities’ accusations of masterminding a controversial coup bid in Turkey last year, in interviews with the Reuters and the US’s National Public Radio (NPR), saying he has always stood against all coups.

A detained Gülen school official is asking for asylum in Georgia in order to avoid extradition to Turkey, where he may face brutal and inhumane treatment, according to his lawyers. Georgia detained Mustafa Emre Cabuk in May. He is one of the managers of Demirel private schoool in Tbilisi.

“If they ask me what my final wish is,” Gulen added, “I would say the person who caused all this suffering and oppressed thousands of innocents, I want to spit in his face.” When asked if he was referring to Erdogan, he replied: “It can’t be anyone else. He is the oppressor.”

According to a report, the police were informed that books written by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen were thrown in the garbage by unidentified people in the Belediyeevleri neighborhood of the Canik district of Samsun province. After the investigation, fingerprints on the books were matched to those of A.E.A, a 22-year-old university student.

Visually impaired Turkish journalist Cüneyt Arat was sent to prison late on Monday due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement. When Arat learned that a prison sentence approved by an upper court on Sunday, he turned himself in to the police later the same day.

Turkish Deputy PM Nurettin Canikli said on Friday that the Turkish government has seized 965 companies which were affiliated to the Gülen movement. The value of assets belonging to companies seized by the Turkish state during the ongoing state of emergency is also announced as nearly 41 billion Turkish Liras, around $11.3 billion.

A coup attempt in Turkey last July that killed more than 300 people was an “outrageous, heinous scenario constructed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his accomplices,” Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen said this week.