LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A Muslim cleric accused of being behind a failed 2016 coup in his native Turkey has died. Fethullah Gulen was 83 years old. He was once a powerful figure in Turkey until he ran afoul of the government and spent the last decades of his life here in the U.S. in self-imposed exile. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Fethullah Gulen went from small-town Islamist preacher to create a vast global social network known as Hizmet, the Turkish word for service. It opened hospitals and schools in dozens of countries. Millions of people followed its particular vision of Islam, including some in influential positions in Turkey's secular government. Soner Cagaptay with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says Gulen helped Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he first came to power in 2003 and was worried about the country's secular military launching a coup.
SONER CAGAPTAY: Gulen reached out to a vulnerable Erdogan by providing his network of judges, prosecutors, cops, journalists, who were aligned with his mission of fighting their own war against Turkey's secularist political system.
NORTHAM: Cagaptay says that alliance began to unravel around 2010. By this time, Gulen had been living in self-exile in Pennsylvania for a decade but still wielded influence in Turkey.
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NORTHAM: In 2016, the relationship finally ruptured after an attempted coup against Erdogan's government. More than 250 people were killed when tanks rolled into Istanbul and fighter aircraft targeted government buildings. Tens of thousands of people were rounded up. Many were purged from their government jobs. Erdogan said Gulen was behind the rebellion, a charge he denied in a 2017 interview with NPR.
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FETHULLAH GULEN: (Through interpreter) If I were to even entertain that idea, if anyone among those soldiers had called me and told me of their plan, I would have told them, you are committing murder.
NORTHAM: Erdogan deemed Gulen's movement a terrorist organization, and hundreds of companies with links to Hizmet were closed. Turkey tried to have Gulen extradited, but the U.S. never agreed. Gulen died at a Pennsylvania hospital.
Jackie Northam, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF STAPES' "OCEAN RIDE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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