US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen dead at 83

A former ally of President Erdogan, Gulen was accused of masterminding a failed coup in 2016 and lived in exile.

Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says was behind a 2016 failed coup, has died in the United States where he was based, Turkish media and a website associated with Gulen said. He was 83.

Herkul, a website which publishes Gulen’s sermons, said on its X account on Monday that Gulen had died on Sunday evening in the hospital were he was being treated.

Gulen built Hizmet, a powerful Islamic movement in Turkey and beyond but spent his later years accused of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusations which he denied.

He was a one-time ally of Erdogan but they fell out spectacularly, and Erdogan held him responsible for the coup in which rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters. Some 250 people were killed in the bid to seize power.

Gulen had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999.

Known to his supporters as Hodjaefendi, or respected teacher, Gulen was born in a village in the eastern Turkish province of Erzurum in 1941. The son of an imam, he studied the Quran from a very young age.

In 1959, Gulen was appointed imam in a mosque in the northwestern city of Edirne and came to prominence as a cleric in the 1960s in the western province of Izmir, where he set up student dormitories and would go to tea houses to preach.

These student houses marked the start of a network which would spread over the following decades through education, business, media and state institutions, giving his supporters extensive influence.

This influence also spread beyond Turkey’s borders to the Turkic republics of Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa and the West through a network of schools.

Gulen had been a close ally of Erdogan and his AK Party, but growing tensions in their relationship exploded in December 2013 when corruption investigations targeting ministers and officials close to Erdogan came to light.

Prosecutors and police from Gulen’s Hizmet movement were widely believed to be behind the investigations and an arrest warrant was issued for Gulen in 2014. His movement was designated a terrorist group two years later, after a coup attempt which resulted in the deaths of over 250 people. Gulen was accused of orchestrating the coup.

Since then, Gulen’s movement has been systematically dismantled in Turkey and its influence has declined internationally.

Erdogan described Gulen’s network as traitors and “like a cancer”, vowing to root them out wherever they are. Hundreds of schools, companies, media outlets and associations linked to him were shut down and assets seized.

Gulen also became an isolated figure within Turkey, reviled by Erdogan’s supporters and shunned by the opposition which saw his network as having conspired over decades to undermine the secular foundations of the republic.

Gulen condemned the coup attempt “in the strongest terms”. “As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt,” he had said.

In an ensuing crackdown, which the government said targeted Gulen’s followers, at least 77,000 people were arrested and 150,000 state workers, including teachers, judges and soldiers, suspended under emergency rule.

Companies and media outlets allegedly linked to Gulen were seized by the state or closed down. The Turkish government said its actions were justified by the gravity of the threat posed to the state by the coup.

Gulen also became an isolated figure within Turkey, reviled by Erdogan’s supporters and shunned by the opposition which saw his network as having conspired over decades to undermine the secular foundations of the republic.

Gulen travelled to the US for medical treatment but remained there as he faced a criminal investigation in Turkey. Ankara long sought to have him extradited from the US.

Speaking in his gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, Gulen said in a 2017 interview by the Reuters news agency that he had no plans to flee the US to avoid extradition.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies