ISTANBUL (AFP) – US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who was accused by Ankara of organising a failed 2016 coup, has died in exile in the United States aged 83, his movement and the Turkish government said on Monday.
Gulen, who lived in the United States since 1999, was the bete noire of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who accused him of heading a "terror organisation".
"Our intelligence sources confirm the death of the leader of the FETO organisation," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a press conference, using Turkey's term for Gulen's influential Hizmet movement of schools, businesses and charities.
Turkey's TRT public television said the preacher, who had lived in Pennsylvania for a quarter of a century and was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017, died in hospital overnight.
The news was first posted on X by Herkul, Gulen's website which is banned in Turkey, saying he died on "October 20".
"The honourable Fethullah Gülen, who spent every moment of his life serving the blessed religion of Islam and humanity, passed away today," the post said, pledging to share details of his funeral.
Gulen moved to live in the United States in 1999, ostensibly for health reasons. From there he ran Hizmet, a movement which has a sprawling network of public schools on every continent.
But the organisation has long been blacklisted by the Turkish authorities who refer to it as FETO, the Fethullah Terror Organisation (FETO).
"This organisation has become a threat rarely seen in the history of our nation," Fidan said, accusing its followers of "being used as a weapon against their own country".
And Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said Turkey's fight against the movement would continue, despite Gulen's death.
"The fight against this organisation, which poses a national security problem to our country... will continue," he wrote on X.
Ally turned enemy
Once an ally who helped Erdogan when he became prime minister in the early 2000s, Gulen became persona non grata after a 2013 corruption scandal engulfed the Turkish premier's inner circle.
Erdogan blamed Gulen and later began accusing him of terror links, denouncing his Hizmet movement as the "FETO terrorist organisation".
Gulen repeatedly insisted his influential movement was merely a network of charitable and business institutions.
Things worsened in 2016 when Erdogan blamed him for masterminding a botched coup, triggering a massive crackdown.
During that purge, some 700,000 people were prosecuted and some 3,000 Gulen followers were jailed for life for what the authorities said was involvement in the putsch.
Another 125,000 people were sacked from public institutions, including 24,000 soldiers and thousands of judges with the authorities shuttering private educational establishments, media outlets and publishing houses.
Turkey still regularly rounds up Gulen followers at home and demands their extradition from countries where his network is active.
Turkish security sources quoted by the private NTV broadcaster, said very few people were expected to attend Gulen's funeral and that his body would likely be buried in the US at a location which would be kept secret.
From anonymity to spiritual leader
Gulen was born in the eastern Turkish province of Erzurum. Public records say it was 1941 but Gulen said he was born in 1938.
Despite being "just another imam in the 1970s" Gulen quickly became "the spiritual leader of a vast community with millions of supporters", wrote researcher Bayram Balci.
Supporters were "present in all sectors of the economy, in education, in the media, and also in the administration", Balci, a researcher at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences-Po), said in a 2021 study.
"With a taste for secrecy and influence, and even manipulation and intimidation... Gulen's movement is very similar to various Catholic movements like the Jesuits, Opus Dei and others, from which it has clearly drawn inspiration," he said.
Turkish officials refer to Gulen's movement as the "FETO terrorist organisation".
It has sometimes been described as a "sect", with members known to help each other in business and expected to contribute their time or money, whether students, housewives or wealthy businessmen.
Gulen moved to the US state of Pennsylvania in 1999.
Despite multiple attempts by Turkey to extradite him, Gulen led a reclusive life in exile on the edge of the Poconos, a scenic mountainous, wooded region of Pennsylvania.