Should Gulen face trial for Turkish coup attempt?
With Erdogan blaming Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for masterminding the recent coup attempt, there have been increasing calls for his extradition from the US to Turkey.
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.
