EU-Digest
In June 1999, the Turkish media, probably tipped off by the military leadership, published transcripts of audio recordings of a 1986 Gülen sermon. “The existing system is still in power,” Gülen was heard saying. “Our friends, who have positions in legislative and administrative bodies, should learn its details and be vigilant all the time so that they can transform it and be more fruitful on behalf of Islam in order to carry out a nationwide restoration.” A warrant for his arrest on charges of plotting to overthrow the state was issued but then rejected, the evidence against him having been judged insufficient. Gülen, who was receiving medical treatment in the United States when the tapes first appeared, chose not to go back to Turkey.
To this day he remains in America, living alongside a small circle of male followers on an estate in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania with a population of 12,000. In Turkey the Gülen movement by using religious taxes and donations from followers, has founded over 150 private schools in Turkey, including Istanbul’s Fatih University. Even though religion has no place in the classroom of secular Turkey or for that matter in any secular country, Gülen school students, often from poor traditional families, are encouraged to follow a regime of fasting and prayer. Following graduation, large numbers go on to join the ranks of the national bureaucracy – precisely the sort of “infiltration” that the Turkish secular constitution prohibits. In addition to the schools, the Gülen movement in Turkey runs a bank, an insurance company, several think tanks, media outlets, associations and charities, and even a finance company.
Since the US and the EU seem to be in love with what they call “moderate Islam” and its spokesmen, so easily exploited in their favor by people like Gülen, certainly does not make objective analysis of the Gülen movement any easier. But it does clarify the reason why Gülen is basically living under the protection of the US Government in America and has carte blanche to run a subversive political religious movement undermining the basic principals of modern Turkish secularism formulated in their constitution. It would be a feather in the hat of the Obama Administration if they remove the protective umbrella provided to him by the Bush Administration and return him back home to Turkey.
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