Fethullah Gülen, the sworn enemy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has died at the age of 86 in the USA.
According to the announcement of his death on the website Herkul.org, Gülen breathed his last in a hospital in Pennsylvania where he was being treated for the health problems he had been facing for several years.
Gulen had been accused by the Erdogan government of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and of running a parallel state in the country to seize control of certain government functions.
Fethullah Gülen was a former imam and an important political figure in Turkey, founder of the Hizmet movement (which means "service" in Turkish) and lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, USA.
Gulen was formerly an ally of Erdogan, but relations between the two men soured in 2013 when Erdogan accused Gulen of instigating the corruption probes, which targeted and implicated dozens of government and ruling party officials.
Gulen was at the top of Turkey's most-wanted list on charges of leading a terrorist organization, and taught a soft version of Islam that believes in science, interfaith dialogue and multi-party democracy.
He had started a dialogue with other religions, with the Vatican, as well as with Jewish organizations and was the head of the Gülen movement which promotes social dialogue on the future of Turkey and the Turkish State and is seen by the West as promoting a tolerant Islam that emphasizes altruism, hard work, education. The Gülen movement has hundreds of schools in Turkey and other countries and has previously been accused of infiltrating and influencing Turkish police.
Gülen's movement has been described as "moderate Islam" and Gülen himself and his followers use market and technology structures and are active users of social media, digital technologies and public relations. Within Turkey the movement keeps its distance from the established Islamic political parties.
