Gulen denies directing coup, calls Erdogan 'oppressor'
In a rare interview, accused Turkey coup mastermind Fethullah Gulen dismissed the charges and said of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "I want to spit in his face."
As the first anniversary of the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey draws near, one of the main characters in the bloody events that unfolded that night has reached out to the Western media to air his side of the mysterious affair.
Fethullah Gulen, the secretive Sunni cleric who is accused by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of masterminding the coup, spoke to NPR’s Robert Siegel on July 10 at his sprawling yet Spartan compound in the Pocono Mountains in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
The 76-year-old Gulen flatly denied any responsibility in the failed putsch that left 265 people dead, saying, “If any one among those soldiers had called me and told me of their plan, I would tell them, ‘You are committing murder.’”
Gulen went on, “The perception that I control all of this … that I tell people to do things and that they are doing them … there is no such thing.” He insisted that he had stood against “all coups.”
