You forgot the most important part: Gulen was Tayipp's closest friend, ally, and advisor .. until he wasn't. Gulen was a huge part of Gulen gaining power, and h

You forgot the most important part: Gulen was Tayipp's closest friend, ally, and advisor .. until he wasn't. Gulen was a huge part of Gulen gaining power, and he used that network to his advantage. Go back to whatever it was called, Operation Sledgehammer. I was here during the fake coup, watching the f16s, watching Tayipp descend from his private jet like he was jesus, his arms stretched out, telling his people to come defend him, hoardes of nationalists swarming the tarmac to his defense. The whole time it seemed like bullshit. My friend's father, who is 80 and has experienced 5 or 6 coups, went fishing 5am saturday morning. When his children told him not to, he said, "I've been through this 5 times now, and I call bullshit. This isn't a coup, this is a theatrical rendition of 1984, and Gulen is Emmanuel Goldstein. Interesting anecdote: I met a Gulenist in Ukraine last month. I'm a US citizen living in Türkiye, working for an American firm, and was in Kiev meeting some contract programmers. One programmer, a Tatar from Russia, One found out I was living in Istanbul and approached me really excitedly. He wanted to tell me about the great Turkish organization which funded his education. I stopped him right there and told him that an in-law of mine was hurt in the fake coup and he would do well to end this line of conversation, but he persisted. When I suggested Gulen was a terrorist, he rather .. aggressively told me "No Erdogan is the Terrorist" and got in my face. I politely told him "Both can be true, have a nice night". The next day I had him removed from our account due to his actions, but in reality, due to his association with a terrorist group, and let my account manager know what was going on. He's no longer with that consulting company either.