EGN NEWS DESK
Known to his followers as Hoca efendi (grasp preacher), Gülen went on to construct a stable base of supporters, forming his sect and core cadre, named the Hizmet Hareketi (Movement of Service). By the Nineties, members educated within the lighthouses had began discovering positions in state establishments.
Though beneath the vigilant eye of the Turkish navy, Gülen tried to maintain shut relations with politicians and the enterprise world alike. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he established colleges in Turkic nations, the Balkans and Africa. While his non-public colleges produced 1000’s of graduates yearly, the motion was additionally capable of acquire management of corporations in numerous sectors, together with meals, well being, schooling and media, because of his followers’ annual contributions.
Toward the tip of the last decade, nevertheless, Turkish legislation enforcement ready a report exposing the motion’s affect inside the state equipment, resulting in an investigation by a prosecutor who accused Gülen “of making an attempt to create a theocratic state.”
So, on March 21, 1999, Gülen left Turkey for the U.S. — by no means to return once more.
Not lengthy after, Erdoğan’s rise to energy in 2003 introduced Gülen’s motion with a possibility to carry its political affect out of the shadows. The new prime minister lacked affect within the state equipment, and Gülen wanted Erdoğan to assist unfold the motion’s maintain — or, as Gülen himself was quoted as saying in one among his sermons from that point, to “ooze into the state’s arteries.”
But by the 2010s, as soon as secular sections of the Turkish navy and judiciary had been purged after present trials like Ergenekon and Sledgehammer — a parallel case concentrating on the navy — the strains between the Gülen and Erdoğan camps approached breaking level.
