Erdogan rival Gulen dies in exile at 83

Fethullah Gulen, exiled cleric accused of Turkey's 2016 coup, dies in the US at 83, sparking reactions.

ISTANBUL:

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 Monday.

Turkish-born Gulen, who had lived in the United States since 1999, was once a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the two became bitter enemies.

"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 once-influential Hizmet movement.

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.

In a message on X, Gulen's website Herkul, which is banned in Turkey, said he died on "October 20", pledging to share details about his funeral.

Gulen moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, ostensibly for health reasons, and from there he ran Hizmet which, at the time, had a sprawling network of public schools on every continent.

In 2013 he had a major falling out with Erdogan and three years later the Turkish strongman accused him of plotting to overthrow him, dubbing Hizmet "the Fethullah Terror Organisation" (FETO).

Some 250 people died on July 15, 2016 when a rogue military faction tried to overthrow Turkey's government using warplanes and tanks, with Erdogan blaming Gulen supporters within the military.

"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".

Despite Gulen's death, Turkey would continue "the fight against this organisation, which poses a national security problem", Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc wrote on X