ISTANBUL — Clues about who may have been behind the coup attempt in Turkey increasingly point to US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen and his network of supporters. Yet the big picture will remain blurred until the movement’s anti-Iran stance, too often neglected, is considered.
Gulen’s anti-Iran posture is first and foremost rooted in ideology, as he hails from a tradition that views political Shiism as a threat. In a 1997 interview with Yeni Yuzyil, Gulen clearly laid out this tendency when he criticized “the export of a sect and fanatical Islamic understanding in the name of religion and Islamic revolution,” adding that the Iranians “uphold their own sect and interpretations before the true religion.” Gulen also pointed to “Persian expansionism in the region” while referring to Iran’s “historic rivalry with [Turkey]” as a “certain danger.”