“Dear Friends, Our teacher passed away on October 20, 2024, at 21:20 [US time] in the hospital where he had been receiving treatment for a while,” read a post on X from Herkul Nagme, a website dedicated to publishing updates on Gulen’s life and his videos where he addresses his followers.
“His doctors will make a statement about the hospital process in the coming hours,” it added
He was 83 years old.
Gulen and his transnational Hizmet [Service] movement, have been accused by Erdogan and the Turkish government of orchestrating the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey that killed more than 240 people. His movement was declared a terrorist organization just two months before the incident and a countrywide crackdown ensued to capture his followers.
“Fethullah Gulen, the traitor and enemy of religion, who spent his entire life plotting against the Republic of Turkey, has died,” Turkish state television TRT said on X.
Gulen moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, and has been residing there since then despite calls by Erdogan to return to Turkey in 2013.
In 2000, Gulen was tried in absentia and was charged with attempting to embed his supporters into civil service and important governmental positions to overthrow the government.
The charges were reversed in 2008 under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and then-prime minister Erdogan, who enjoyed good relations with the cleric until an abrupt end in 2013 after a corruption scandal involving Erdogan’s closest circles pitted the two men against one another. The Turkish president accused Gulen of creating a “parallel state” within Turkey.
Erdogan’s consolidation of power has been denounced by Gulen, who has referred to the Turkish president as a “dictator” and encouraged the US and European governments to do more to restore political freedoms in Turkey.
Gulen was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017.
Gulen’s Hizmet movement has focused on establishing schools across the globe, claiming to increase the quality of education. The movement established its first schools in central Asia and later spread globally.
The movement established the first schools in the Kurdistan Region in 1994 in Erbil, and three years later in Sulaimani. The schools teach English, Kurdish, Arabic, and Turkish languages.
Gulen’s followers claim the founding of the schools is in line with the vision of Kurdish Islamic scholar Said Nursi and his teachings, who had a vision of establishing schools to spread Islamic teachings.
