Gulen lived in self-imposed exile in US since 1999 and denied involvement in coup against Tayyip Erdogan
Agencies
New York: Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric based in the United States, who built a powerful movement in Turkey and beyond but spent his later years mired in accusations of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan, has died.
Herkul, a website which publishes Gulen’s sermons, said on its X account that the 83-year-old cleric died on Sunday evening in the US hospital where he was being treated.
He was a one-time ally of Erdogan but they fell out spectacularly, and Erdogan held him responsible for the 2016 attempted coup in which rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters.
Some 250 people were killed in the bid to seize power.
Gulen, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, denied involvement in the putsch.
According to its followers, Gulen’s movement — known as “Hizmet” which means “service” in Turkish — seeks to spread a moderate brand of Islam that promotes Western-style education, free markets and interfaith communication.
Since the failed coup, his movement has been systematically dismantled in Turkey and its influence has declined internationally.
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, or Islamic preacher, he studied the Holy Quran from infancy.
In 1959, Gulen was appointed as a mosque imam in the northwestern city of Edirne and began to come to prominence as a preacher in the 1960s in the western province of Izmir, where he set up student dormitories and would go to tea houses to preach.
