
German intelligence expert and author Erich Schmidt-Eenboom has said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, not the faith-based Gülen movement, was behind a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016 based on intelligence reports from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Turkey is pressuring “religious advisors” to keep an eye on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opponents in 38 countries, including Belgium. In Belgium, how the religious councillor at the Turkish embassy behaved could be seen as interference.

A report published by The Black Sea news website on Saturday revealed that imams from Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) spied on people sympathetic to Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement he inspired in Romania as well.

In his desire to convince the world that Gülen is a criminal, Erdogan has been demanding that the U.S. extradite Gülen for months. That also likely explains why the Turkish government is currently collecting information from all over the world. It needs incriminating evidence in order to substantiate the allegations against Gülen.

Boris Pistorius, the Interior Minister for Lower Saxony State of Germany, has accused Turkey of carrying out “unacceptable” spying on its soil. It is accused of conducting espionage in more than 200 associations and schools linked to supporters of Fethullah Gülen. Pistorius said the move was “intolerable and unacceptable.”

Sweden’s official radio station, Radio Sweden, has documented that Turkey’s government is trying to identify and track down supporters of the opposition Gülen Movement in Sweden. In a conversation, a Swedish Gülen supporter is threatened that there would be reprisals if he did not give some concrete information on Gülenist activity in Sweden.

German authorities have informed Turks linked with the Gülen movement about Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) surveillance in Germany. German experts concluded that most of the photos of 300 Turks and 200 schools, associations and organizations that are connected to the Gülen movement were taken secretly by surveillance cameras.

A 15-month-old baby with Down syndrome, Ayşe Sena Bunlu, has been suffering from serious health problems ever since her parents, both of whom are police officers, were purged from their posts and jailed in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, according to a story in the Tr724 news portal on Friday.

Contrary to accusations made by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament has concluded that Fethullah Gülen and the movement he inspired as a whole were not behind a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15.

The Swiss foreign minister told his Turkish counterpart on Thursday that Switzerland would “rigorously investigate” any illegal spying by Ankara on expatriate Turks before an April 16 referendum that could expand Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

Ali Özer, a 48-year-old doctor who was jailed due to his alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, has died of a heart attack in Çorum Prison. This is 57th such suspicious death or suicide since last summer’s so-called coup attempt against Erdogan regime.