The Turkish government blames Friday's attempted coup on an exiled cleric in Pennsylvania

People wave Turkish flags after a failed coup

(Image credit: Adem Altan/Getty Images)

last updated 16 July 2016

The government of Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has pointed the finger for Friday night's failed coup attempt at Fethullah Gülen, an elderly Muslim cleric living in exile in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Erdogan has long said Gülen, who leads a movement called Hizmet supported by about 10 percent of Turkey, is plotting to overthrow his country's officially secular government. Erdogan's historically Islamist AKP party has in the past provoked coups of its own.

The U.S. branch of Hizmet, the Alliance for Shared Values, issued a statement categorically denying all involvement, saying, "We have consistently denounced military interventions in domestic politics. These are core values of Hizmet participants. We condemn any military intervention in domestic politics of Turkey." Gülen himself did not comment.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.