Thousands turn out for Gulen prayer service in New Jersey

Thousands of mourners attended a prayer service Thursday for Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, the exiled rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who died this week in the United States.

Gulen, accused by Turkey of organizing a failed 2016 coup, died in a US hospital on Sunday at the age of 83.

The service, which included readings from the Koran and tributes to Gulen, was held at a sports stadium in New Jersey, which has a large Turkish-American population.

Organizers put the number of attendees at more than 10,000.

His casket was draped in a green cloth which featured verses from the Koran.

Among the mourners was Alp Aslandogan, executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, a non-profit organization.

“He always missed Turkey,” Aslandogan told AFP. “Some of his friends brought little pieces of soil from different towns of Turkey, but he felt that he was safe here and he also belonged to the world, to humanity.

“Yes, he comes from a Turkish ethnic background, but he was a man who belonged to humanity,” he said.

Gulen is expected to be buried at the Pennsylvania compound in the Pocono Mountains where he had lived since moving to the United States in 1999.

The charismatic preacher, whose Hizmet movement once operated 4,000 schools in Turkey and 500 others around the world, was a close ally of Erdogan before they became bitter enemies.

Having helped Erdogan when he became prime minister in the early 2000s, Gulen’s ties with him became strained in 2010.

Three years later, their relationship became pure enmity after a corruption scandal engulfed the Turkish premier’s inner circle, for which Erdogan blamed Gulen.

Some 250 people died on July 15, 2016 when a rogue military faction tried to overthrow Turkey’s government. Erdogan blamed Gulen supporters within the military.

After the coup, authorities prosecuted more than 700,000 people and jailed some 3,000 Gulen followers for life over their alleged involvement in the putsch.

Gulen was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017.

Erdogan on Tuesday condemned Gulen and his followers as traitors and vowed to pursue them globally.

“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.