Gülen might seek refuge in Egypt: Report

ANKARA

Fethullah Gülen resides in this compound in Pennsylvania, United States.

The U.S.-based leader of FETÖ, Fetullah Gülen, might seek refuge in Egypt in the event that he gets deported from the United States, a new report prepared by the Turkish Police Academy has said.

“FETÖ has come to acquire powerful relations with Egypt’s intelligence institutions following its activities for longs years in Egypt. Within this regard, if Gülen is deported from the U.S., claims that he might seek refuge in Egypt are not baseless,” said the “FETÖ – An International Threat” report.

“It is not a coincidence that only Egypt abstained at the session in which the draft resolution on whether or not the Organization of Islamic Cooperation should include FETÖ to its terrorists list on Oct. 19, 2016 was being discussed,” the report said.

Apart from Middle Eastern countries, the 74-page report also included the organization’s alleged links to the U.S.

FETÖ has more than 140 charter schools in which roughly 60,000 students have been studying, the report expressed.

“FETÖ earns an annual revenue stream of over 500 million dollars in the U.S. via its financial activities,” said the report.

Gülen has been residing in the U.S. since 1999, which makes the country the center of FETÖ’s worldwide activities, the report stated.

Another operational base for FETÖ is Europe, according to the report, where group members are increasingly seeking asylum in Germany and Austria, running business groups such as the Vienna Businessmen’s Foundation (“Viyana İş Adamlari Derneği” in Turkish) and publishing the Kanttekening daily, which replaced its previous media organ Zaman, the report said.

Although the illegal group’s school network in the Netherlands took a hit with falling enrollments after the failed coup attempt of 2016 in Turkey, FETÖ continued its operations by changing the schools’ names, the report said.

Albania became a stronghold for FETÖ after the illegal group provided scholarships to the children of high-level bureaucrats for years, according to the report.

Ankara accuses FETÖ of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.