Turkish president’s nemesis dies in the US

Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen is pictured at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania in this December 28, 2004 file photo.
Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen is pictured at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania in this December 28, 2004 file photo.
REUTERS/Selahattin Sevi/Zaman Daily via Cihan News Agency

An exiled Turkish cleric who founded a global Islamic movement and was an adversary rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan died Sunday in the United States.

Fethullah Gülen rose from small-town preacher to global leader of a movement built around a moderate, civically engaged vision of Islam, which built schools and other social institutions across Turkey and more than a hundred other countries.

“Gülenists” had a strong, if secretive, presence in the Turkish bureaucracy. But Gülen himself had lived in the US since 1999, when he fled repression by the ultra-secular Turkish government of the time.

The politics: Gülen was once close with Erdogan, whose Justice and Development party in 2002 became the first Islamist party to win power in Turkey. But by the mid-2010s, the two men had begun to clash.

The break was complete in 2016, when Erdogan accused Gülen of orchestrating a failed coup against him. Turkey arrested thousands of alleged Gülenist “terrorists” in government and forced dozens of countries to extradite Gülen’s followers.

That significantly weakened Gülenism. Whether Gülen’s death will hasten further decline remains to be seen. In the short term, his passing removes a sore spot in US-Turkey relations: Washington had repeatedly denied Ankara’s requests to extradite him.

More from GZERO Media

Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025.
REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

15: Fifteen Palestinian medics who went missing last week were apparently killed by Israeli forces and buried in an impromptu mass grave along with their ambulances, according to the UN.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS) appointed Saudi Prime Minister, in a government shuffling announced by a Royal Decree, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on September 24, 2022.
Balkis Press/ABACAPRESS.COM

After cutting Saudi oil production beginning in late 2022 to set a floor under slumping global oil prices, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is set to change course.

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.
THOMAS SAMSON/Pool via REUTERS

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty by a French court on Monday for embezzling European Parliament funds, and faces a five-year ban from running for public office. While it may seem like Le Pen’s political career is dead, “This isn’t the end of the story,” says Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s managing director of Europe.

President Donald Trump holds an executive order about tariffs while flanked by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the Oval Office on Feb. 13, 2025.

REUTERS/File Photo

Donald Trump argues that any short-term pain from his global tariffs will translate into long-term gain as businesses move their operations to the US. He plans to announce a sweeping new round of tariffs on April 2. We asked Eurasia Group expert Nancy Wei what to expect from what Trump is billing as a “Liberation Day” from an unfair global trading system.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, member of parliament of the Rassemblement National party, leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial alongside 24 other defendants over accusations of misappropriation of European Union funds, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.

REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Oh là là! A French court on Monday found National Rally leader Marine Le Pen guilty of misappropriating European funds to her far-right party, and barred the three-time presidential candidate barred from running for office for the next five years. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing and said last November, “It’s my political death that’s being demanded.”

- YouTube

In a few short weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has rapidly reshaped the federal government, firing thousands of workers, slashing spending, and shutting entire agencies. DOGE’s actions have faced some pushback from the courts, but Musk says he’s just getting started. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with WIRED Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond for a look at President Trump’s increasingly symbiotic relationship with the tech billionaire, Musk’s impact on politics and policy, and what happens when Silicon Valley’s ‘disrupt-or-die’ ethos collides with the machinery of the US government.