Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday condemned late preacher Fethullah Gulen and his followers as traitors and vowed to pursue them globally, following the influential cleric’s death in exile.
“These traitors managed to escape Turkish justice thanks to the ones who protect them. They left without being held to account for the martyrs’ blood they shed. But they will not be able to escape divine justice,” Erdogan said in a televised address.
Gulen was once a close ally of Erdogan but the two became bitter enemies.
Erdogan accused Gulen of organising a failed 2016 coup against him.
Gulen moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, ostensibly for health reasons, and from there ran his Hizmet movement, which once operated 4,000 schools in Turkey and 500 others around the world.
The charismatic preacher, who was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017, died in hospital on Sunday in the United States.
He fell out with Erdogan in 2013 and three years later the Turkish strongman accused him of masterminding the coup, dubbing Hizmet “the Fethullah Terror Organisation” (FETO).
“We will continue our fight against Feto,” Erdogan said on Tuesday.
“Whether it is in Turkey or in the farthest corner of the world, we will be on the back of the FETO hyena pack”.
