Fethullah Gülen, Turkish cleric accused of staging a coup from the Poconos, dies in Pa.
Fethullah Gülen lived in self exile in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s.
Fethullah Gülen, a leader of an Islamic religious movement accused of planning a failed coup in Turkey who spent decades in self-exile in the Poconos, has died. He was in his 80s and experienced multiple health complications.
Who was Fethullah Gülen and what was his movement about?
Gülen self-exiled to a gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains in the late 1990s, where he would continue to wield influence among his millions of followers in Turkey and globally. He adopted a philosophy that combined Sufism — a mystical form of Islam — with staunch advocacy for democracy, education, science, and interfaith dialogue.
Gülen was trained as an imam and gained notice in Turkey some 50 years ago. He preached tolerance and dialogue between faiths, and he believed that religion and science could go hand in hand. His belief in merging Islam with Western values and Turkish nationalism struck a chord with some Turks, earning him millions of followers. Gülen’s movement was sometimes known as Hizmet, Turkish for service.
His official birth date is listed as April 27, 1941, but that has long been in dispute. Y. Alp Aslandogan, who leads a New York-based group that promotes Gülen’s ideas and work, said Gülen was actually born sometime in 1938.
What was Gülen accused of?
In the 2010s, Gülen’s frustrations with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan mounted. Gülen called Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating power and crushing dissent. Erdogan cast Gülen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the attempted military coup on July 15, 2016, when factions within the Turkish military used tanks, warplanes, and helicopters to try to overthrow Erdogan’s government.
Heeding a call from Erdogan, thousands of Turkish residents took to the streets to oppose the takeover attempt. The alleged coup-plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and about 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed.
Gülen firmly denied his involvement, and his supporters dismissed the allegations as ridiculous and politically motivated.
Turkey put Gülen on its most-wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the United States showed little inclination to send him back, saying it needed more evidence of the coup. Gülen was never charged with a crime in the United States, and he consistently denounced terrorism as well as the coup plotters.
When did Gülen move to the Poconos?
Gülen first came to Saylorsburg, Pa. — about 90 miles outside of Philadelphia in Monroe County — in 1999 on the advice of a cardiologist who had been treating his congenital heart disease, The Inquirer previously reported. He lived in a small apartment on a 26-acre gated Mount Eaton Road property that was previously a family run resort for hunters and a summer camp for Muslim youth from New York. He would stay for nearly 30 years.
In Turkey, Gülen’s movement was subject to a broad crackdown. The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup plot, sacked more than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and more than 23,000 from the military, and shuttered hundreds of businesses, schools, and media organizations tied to Gülen.
Gülen called the government’s actions a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants.”
“The last year has taken a toll on me as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government decides they are somehow ‘connected’ to me or the Hizmet movement and treats that alleged connection as a crime,” he said on the one-year anniversary of the failed coup.
What did Poconos residents think of Gülen?
In Pennsylvania, the compound became an unlikely U.S. center of a vast global network of Gülen-affiliated enterprises. Only Gülen and a handful of staff lived at the main property full time, with a rotating roster of overnight visitors who sought him out to pray and study by his side.
Residents viewed the cleric and the Poconos grounds with a mix of ambivalence and curiosity, most catching only glimpses of his property at community dinners and picnics organized by his staff. Rarely seen in public, Gülen left the grounds mostly to see doctors for ailments that included heart disease and diabetes.
Some residents remained suspicious of Gülen and hoped to see him extradited. Others advocated for him to be left alone.
» READ MORE: The cleric next door: Pocono neighbors weigh in on Fethullah Gülen, the man Turkey wants back
In a 2019 interview with The Inquirer, Brandy Artz described Gülen and his followers as good neighbors. She added that the group would stuff invitations to Ramadan and Thanksgiving dinners in her mailbox and often come by with Turkish candy or platters of shrimp and steak around those holidays.
In contrast, Artz said it was the anti-Gülen demonstrators who were the real nuisance, with Erdogan sympathizers picketing up and down Mount Eaton Road with Turkish and American flags.
“They’d stand in front of our driveway and yell at us: ‘You let a terrorist move in next door!’” Artz said. “I don’t know where you live, but we don’t have any say over who our neighbors are.”
Reactions to Gülen’s death
Even in his death, sentiments surrounding Gülen depend on whom is asked.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Gülen’s death had been confirmed by Turkish intelligence sources and added that “the leader of this dark organization has died.” Others, like the Boston Turkish Cultural Center, praised “his impact on education.”
“May his legacy inspire future generations to strive for peace and understanding,” the cultural center said in a statement.
According to the New York Times, Gülen died late Sunday in a U.S. hospital. He never married and did not have any children. It is not known who, if anyone, will lead the movement.
Staff writer Vinny Vella and the Associated Press contributed to this article.