Who was behind Turkey’s bloody coup attempt, which cost more than 160 lives, saw the nation’s parliament bombed and brought the country to the brink of brutal military rule for the first time since 1983?

Since the first moment of the coup attempt, the government pointed to the Fethullah Gulen community, an Islamic sect with a clandestine network within the Turkish state. No wonder the coup plot was followed by a massive crackdown on “Gulenists,” as they are called, within the military, judiciary, police and other institutions. Many observers in the West, however, seem quite reluctant to accept that the Gulenists had anything to do with the coup, saying that there is no evidence. Some even suspect that the coup attempt might be a hoax by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his version of the Reichstag fire.

There are two likely reasons for this skepticism: Lately Erdogan has pumped out many fantastical conspiracy theories, as I have criticized repeatedly in Al-Monitor. Also, Erdogan’s deepening authoritarianism rightly concerns people about Turkey, and many observers think that this is the main problem in the county. However, some conspiracies are real, as evidenced by the coup plot itself. Moreover, the Gulenist problem is not just real, but lethal, as shown by the events of the past several days.

The Gulen movement has hundreds of thousands of members, who all seem to believe that the former mosque preacher has some special divine guidance and wisdom. People from the group's inner circle have personally told me that they see him as the “chosen one” — the Mahdi, the Islamic version of the messiah concept. This belief makes the community very tight knit with full obedience to Gulen. There is no room for any dissent, let alone criticism.