Q: Do you know why the president (Erdogan) needed to bring your name up in this [coup attempt]?

Fethullah Gulen: He (Mr. Erdogan) has always had a reaction to those who do not obey him since the beginning.

As I previously expressed in other occasions, maybe, he was concealing some of his feelings.

There are things they were not able to achieve worldwide. People in the Hizmet Movement opened schools in 170 countries.

They tried to open Yunus Emre houses in 14-15 locations but they could not be successful. Turkish Olympiads displeased them.

Before founding the [AK] Party, he came to consult with me about founding the party. I met with him twice. One is when he came to ask my opinion about founding the [AK] Party. I suppose, he went to other people as well. It was not only a matter of asking opinion but also seeking support. I expressed my own considerations at the time.

Then my friends told me this. After he met with me in the 5th floor (Altunizade, Istanbul), when he was in the elevator, he said to the person next to him “we need to defeat them, vanquish them first.”

That is, they do not want any alternative formation, any service to exist.

Fethullah Gülen on Jihad

Basically the lesser jihad is to perform established religious duties while the greater one is to do them in a sincere and conscious manner. It is difficult to…

The Spiritual Heart in the Thought of Fethullah Gulen

Gülen resembles earlier spiritual teachers in that he evaluates the human as a whole; he is concerned with human’s not only spiritual but also material well-being. This holds…

The Life of Fethullah Gülen: Highlights from His Education

Mr. Gülen’s father, from whom he learned basic elements of Islam, some Arabic and Persian, was a scholar as well as an imam. Mr. Gülen remembers him as…