Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Thursday that his government has been preparing for an attempt to destroy the financial resources of the faith-based Gülen movement abroad.
Erdoğan considers the movement to be his arch enemy.
“In the next hundred days, we will cripple the financial leg of FETÖ’s organization abroad,” Erdoğan said.
Turkey’s government accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating a July 15, 2016 failed coup and calls the movement by the pejorative acronym “FETÖ” to label it a terrorist organization despite the lack of any evidence of terrorism. Turkey has been persecuting hundreds of thousands of people as part of a brutal purge of real and perceived followers of the movement.
Erdoğan’s witch-hunt against the movement dates back to corruption investigations that implicated his family in December 2013. Erdoğan, then prime minister, held Gülen movement supporters within the judiciary and police responsible for the corruption probes and dismissed thousands in government positions.
Correctiv, a non-profit investigative newsroom in Europe, on Tuesday published an investigative report revealing secret torture sites inside Turkey to interrogate Gülen movement followers, some of them abducted from overseas.
Turkey’s intelligence agency has abducted movement supporters in countries including Kosovo, Gabon, Pakistan and Moldova.