Unfortunately, in a country where opposition media outlets are either closed or put under tutelage, a significant portion of Turkish citizens believe… - Fethullah Gülen

Volunteers of this movement have been monitored by hundreds of governments, intelligence agencies, researchers or independent civil society actors around the world for 25 years and no illegal activity has been found. For this reason, many countries do not take seriously the Turkish Government's theses about the Hizmet movement.

The next day, the government produced lists of thousands of individuals whom they tied to Hizmet — for opening a bank account, teaching at a school or reporting for a newspaper — and treated such an affiliation as a crime and began destroying their lives. The lists included people who had been dead for months and people who had been serving at NATO’s European headquarters at the time. International watchdogs have reported numerous abductions, in addition to torture and deaths in detention. The government pursued innocent people outside Turkey, pressuring Malaysia, for instance, to deport three Hizmet sympathizers last week, including a school principal who has lived there for more than a decade, to face certain imprisonment and likely torture.

During the attempted military coup in Turkey this month, I condemned it in the strongest terms. “Government should be won through a process of free and fair elections, not force,” I said. “I pray to God for Turkey, for Turkish citizens, and for all those currently in Turkey that this situation is resolved peacefully and quickly.”