Turkish intelligence sources have confirmed the death of Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) ringleader Fetullah Gülen, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Monday in the first official reaction from Türkiye following reports in the media. Fidan, himself a target of the terrorist group in the past, said Türkiye would continue its counterterrorism efforts against the group.
“The leader of this dark organization has died,” Fidan told reporters in Ankara at a news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.
Gülen, the mastermind behind the 2016 coup attempt in Türkiye, which killed 252 people, died on Sunday evening at a hospital in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, said the German branch of a FETÖ foundation that runs schools, tutoring centers and kindergartens in Germany, early on Monday.
Gülen’s terrorist network has disguised itself as a religious movement in its decades-long duplicity to overthrow the Turkish government through infiltrators in state institutions.
Türkiye has sought Gülen’s extradition from the U.S. since 2016.
Fidan said that the news of Gülen’s death would "not make Türkiye lax."
“This organization has been a rare source of threat in our nation’s history. It has added thousands of our youths to its ranks under the pretext of sacred values and turned them into a machine that betrays their own homeland, people and sacred values,” Fidan said.
He argued that FETÖ-linked people were used by foreign intelligence services as a weapon against their own homeland.
Thousands of FETÖ suspects fled Türkiye in the aftermath of the coup attempt, mostly to Germany and the U.S.
Fidan said he wished Gülen’s death meant the “spell” on said people were lifted and urged them to “give up this treacherous path and stop working against their own state and people.”
“This path doesn’t lead anywhere good,” Fidan added. “Our state and nation will continue fighting against FETÖ as they do all kinds of terrorist groups.”
Separately, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said the fight against “this fundamental national security problem will not be limited to its ringleader and continue against all FETÖ extensions.”
He assured trials and international judicial mechanisms against FETÖ suspects would resume “with the same determination without being impacted by the said death.”
