Will Egypt offer asylum to Gulen?
If the United States ever agrees to extradite Fethullah Gulen to Turkey, he has avid supporters who would welcome him in Egypt.
Egyptian politicians and media figures are calling on their government to grant political asylum to Fethullah Gulen and supporters of the Gulen movement.
The Turkish government accuses Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in the United States, of being behind the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, and is calling on American authorities to extradite him.
Egyptian parliamentarian Imad Mahrous recently presented a draft statement to his government proposing political asylum for Gulen. After discussions with a number of parliament members, he told Al-Monitor by phone, “The Egyptian government was not opposed to granting Gulen and his supporters political asylum.”
He clarified that “Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail had confirmed on more than one occasion that the Egyptian authorities were not opposed to taking this step and completely understood the security threats being faced by Gulen’s supporters inside Turkey, [especially] after all of their institutions were closed and [their members] were subjected to a campaign of arbitrary arrest.”
