Turkey to add Gülen movement to list of terror groups: President

“We took a new decision yesterday. We said that it [the Gülen movement] is an illegal terrorist organization,” said Erdoğan at an event in the Central Anatolian province of Kırşehir on May 27. 

“We took a recommendation decision regarding the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization. We have sent it to the government and we’re now waiting for the cabinet decision. We will register it as a terrorist organization. It will be tried in the same category as the PYD [Democratic Union Party] and the PKK [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party],” he said, referring to other groups that Turkey formally lists as “terrorist.” 

Erdoğan also claimed that the movement had tried to “tear the nation and the ummah apart,” but the Turkish government would “never allow it to do so.” 

“Some of them have escaped and some of them are in jail,” he said. 

Gülen has long been accused by leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmakers, President Erdoğan and his inner circle of forming and heading a terrorist organization to topple the Turkish government through insiders in the police and other state institutions.

A Turkish court in December 2014 issued an arrest warrant for Gülen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999.