Türkiye confirms death of FETÖ ringleader Gülen in the USA

Kathleen William October 21, 2024

Turkish intelligence sources have confirmed the death of FETÖ ringleader Fetullah Gülen, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Friday in Ankara's first official reaction to media reports.

“The leader of this dark organization has died,” Fidan told reporters in Ankara at a news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.

Gülen, the mastermind of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey in which 252 people were killed, died on Sunday evening in a hospital in the US state of Pennsylvania, said the German branch of a FETÖ foundation that supports schools, tutoring centers and kindergartens in Germany operates. early on Monday.

Gülen's terrorist network has disguised itself as a religious movement in its decades-long duplicity to overthrow the Turkish government by infiltrating state institutions.

Türkiye has been unsuccessfully requesting Gülen's extradition from the USA since 2016.

Fidan said news of Gülen's death “will not make Türkiye complacent.”

“This organization has been a rare source of threat in our country’s history. It has taken thousands of your youth into its ranks under the pretext of sacred values and turned them into a machine that betrays their own homeland, their own people and their sacred values,” Fidan said.

He argued that people close to FETÖ were being used by foreign intelligence services as a weapon against their own homeland.

Thousands of FETÖ suspects fled Turkey after the coup attempt, mainly to Germany and the USA

Fidan said he wished Gülen's death meant that the “spell” over these people would be lifted and called on them to “abandon this treacherous path and stop working against their own state and their own people.”

“This path leads to nothing good,” Fidan added. “Our state and nation will continue to fight FETÖ, just as they do all sorts of terrorist groups.”