Gülen movement ‘founded by CIA like the Mormons and Scientologists,’ says Turkish prosecutor

İZMİR

REUTERS photo



The CIA organizes these sects as non-governmental organizations in order “to make changes to society,” read the indictment prepared Zafer Dur, a prosecutor in the Aegean province of İzmir.



The system that the Gülenists have built over years up in the education, heath, political, technology and culture sectors aims at the same thing as these churches, Dur said.



He claimed that it would not be possible for a primary school graduate, 75-year-old Fethullah Gülen, who has been living in the U.S. since 1999, to have built up such a large organization and infiltrated vital state organizations through his own efforts and abilities.



“Without international backing, Gülen could not have opened schools in 160 countries,” Dur added.



The prosecutor also established a link between the arrest of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) leader in 1999 and Gülen moving to the U.S. in the same year.



“Investigative journalists have been reporting that [Gülenists] worked as contractors for foreign intelligence services such as the CIA, MI6 and BND and infiltrated into the intelligence services of other countries acting in the name of the services they worked for,” read the indictment.



It noted that the mysterious killings of journalists Necip Hablemitoğlu, Haydar Meriç and Aytunç Altındal, who wrote books on the issue, should be “carefully investigated.”



It also mentioned that journalist Ahmet Şık was arrested in 2011 before his book on Gülenists was published, while Hanefi Avcı and Nedim Şener, who wrote books on the issue, also spent time behind bars.



A Turkish prosecutor probing the financial links of the Fethullah Gülen movement has said the organizational structure of the group is the same as the Mormon Church and the Church of Scientology in the United States, claiming that all three groups were founded by U.S. intelligence.