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Turkey lobbyists bring Ankara’s war with Gulen to Washington

Ankara has hired a British law firm to go after Erdogan’s main rival in his self-imposed US exile.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, November 26, 2015. REUTERS/Umit Bektas - RTX1VY0U
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been cracking down on followers of his archrival, Fethullah Gulen, for years. Now he’s going after the US-based cleric himself, with unpredictable ramifications for Ankara’s already fraught relationship with Washington.

The Turkish Embassy in the United States hired British law firm Amsterdam and Partners in October to weigh legal action against Gulen, the brains behind more than 100 highly successful charter schools in the United States and thousands more around the world. The law firm filed suit on behalf of three Turkish defendants in a Pennsylvania court Dec. 7, alleging that the Muslim cleric ordered his followers in the Turkish judicial system to unlawfully arrest and detain members of a rival Islamic movement in 2009, according to Reuters.

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