{"id":12584,"date":"2016-10-24T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/?p=12584"},"modified":"2023-10-13T15:47:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T15:47:07","slug":"who-is-fethullah-gulen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/2016\/10\/24\/who-is-fethullah-gulen\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Fethullah G\u00fclen?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t<div class='panopto-iframe'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<iframe \n\t\t\t\t\t\tsrc='https:\/\/temple.hosted.panopto.com\/Panopto\/pages\/embed.aspx?id=809c1d84-fb06-42a1-8c6d-aeae01733cc4&amp;start=0'\n\t\t\t\t\t\twidth='720'\n\t\t\t            height='405'\n\t\t\t            frameborder='0'\n\t\t\t            allowfullscreen='true'\n\t\t\t            allow='autoplay'\n\t\t\t\t\t><\/iframe>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/files\/2013\/08\/Jon-Pahl.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10516\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/files\/2013\/08\/Jon-Pahl.jpg\" alt=\"Jon Pahl\" width=\"135\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<strong>Professor Jon Pahl<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the evening July 15, 2016 elements of the Turkish military executed a failed coup against the government of President\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the capital Ankara and Turkey&#8217;s\u00a0largest city Istanbul, bridges were blocked, and helicopters and F-16s flew overhead. Battles between the coup plotters and government loyalists left over 250 dead. President Erdogan, on vacation in the coastal city of Marmaris, flew into Istanbul and urged followers to take to the streets to resist the coup.<\/p>\n<p>Within a day of the coup attempt, President\u00a0Erdogan and his government\u00a0were back in control of Turkey and he\u00a0began a widespread purge of the military, media, courts, and\u00a0educational institutions. Before the details\u00a0were even known, it became clear that Erdogan saw\u00a0this as an opportunity\u00a0to eliminate his enemies and consolidate power. On August 2, the Financial Times reported that &#8220;almost 70,000 people have been arrested, suspended or fired.&#8221; (<em>Turkey&#8217;s purge reaches beyond the coup plotters<\/em>)\u00a0The New York Times Online made comparisons\u00a0to &#8220;Joseph <span class=\"hit\">McCarthy<\/span>&#8216;s anti-Communist witch hunt in 1950s America, the <span class=\"hit\">Stalinist<\/span> purges of the 1930s and the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s and &#8217;70s.&#8221;\u00a0(<em>Turks see purge as witch hunt of &#8216;medieval&#8217; darkness&#8217;<\/em>, 9\/16\/16) Though there was little support among Turkish citizens for the coup, the scope of the purge threatens basic democratic governance\u00a0in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>Responsibility for the coup quickly settled on the G\u00fclen Movement, whose members were\u00a0arrested, jailed, and\u00a0in some cases possibly\u00a0tortured. The followers of Fethullah G\u00fclen, a Turkish\u00a0Sufi cleric living in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, constitute\u00a0a decentralized movement\u00a0that is international in scope, with schools in over 100 countries. The G\u00fclen Movement in Turkey,\u00a0its country of origin, was &#8211; until recently &#8211; represented in the highest reaches of the military, judiciary, media, and economy. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have targeted Gulenists for several years now and these purges continue his effort to eliminate their influence across Turkish society. G\u00fclen has been accused of masterminding the coup and an arrest warrant was issued against him in an Istanbul court in August. The Turkish government is seeking G\u00fclen&#8217;s extradition from the United States to stand trial in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>As accusations against G\u00fclen began piling up\u00a0in the Turkish and international media in the aftermath of the coup, I thought of Professor Jon Pahl of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.\u00a0I knew he was working on a biography of Fethullah G\u00fclen and I was interested in hearing what he had to say about G\u00fclen, the G\u00fclen Movement, and recent events in Turkey. Professor Pahl posted a blog at\u00a0the University of California Press titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/blog\/21890\/dont-make-a-mystic-into-a-martyr-fethullah-gulen-as-peacebuilder\/\">Don\u2019t Make A Mystic into a Martyr: Fethullah G\u00fclen as Peacebuilder<\/a>\u00a0on July 24, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>I spoke to Joh Pahl on October 6, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Professor Jon Pahl On the evening July 15, 2016 elements of the Turkish military executed a failed coup against the government of President\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the capital Ankara and Turkey&#8217;s\u00a0largest city Istanbul, bridges were &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/2016\/10\/24\/who-is-fethullah-gulen\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[108,3,5,81,161],"tags":[8,109,12,188,23],"class_list":["post-12584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-human-sciences","category-religion","category-rowland","category-scholarship","tag-hot-topics","tag-interview","tag-islamic-studies","tag-religion","tag-top-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/805"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13595,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12584\/revisions\/13595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/humansciences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}