US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen dead at 83

Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says was behind a 2016 failed coup, has died in the United States where he was based, Turkish media and a website associated with Gulen said. He was 83.

Herkul, a website which publishes Gulen’s sermons, said on its X account on Monday that Gulen had died on Sunday evening in the hospital were he was being treated.

Gulen built Hizmet, a powerful Islamic movement in Turkey and beyond but spent his later years accused of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusations which he denied.

He was a one-time ally of Erdogan but they fell out spectacularly, and Erdogan held him responsible for the 2016 attempted coup in which rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters. Some 250 people were killed in the bid to seize power.

Gulen had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999.

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