Turkish religious leader Fethullah Gülen, Ankara's bête noire, died on Monday, October 21, aged 83, in the United States, where he settled in 1999 and remained until his death, never setting foot in Turkey again. Founder of the movement that bears his name, the preacher lived the last decades of his life on a vast estate in the heart of the Poconos Mountains, Pennsylvania, from where he continued to exert his influence on his millions of followers worldwide.

Any possibility of a burial in his home village of Pasinler, in the Erzurum region of eastern Anatolia, has been completely ruled out. The imam was too toxic. Blamed by the Turkish authorities of masterminding the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, which he has always denied, he is a disgraced figure whose name is not even mentioned. "The leader of this dark organization is dead, but our nation's determination to fight terrorism will continue," said Hakan Fidan, Turkey's foreign minister, upon hearing of his death. Although Turkey had demanded his extradition, Washington always refused, in the absence of convincing evidence of his guilt.

And yet, for 20 years, Gülen had been the closest ally of Turkey's number one, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The definitive rupture came in 2016, after the failed coup, a bloody episode that resulted in the deaths of 252 people and whose instigators have never really been identified. The only certainty is that the coup served as a pretext for the Turkish president to unleash an unprecedented purge within the country's institutions and civil society.

Tens of thousands of people were arrested for their alleged involvement in the coup attempt, 130,000 civil servants were fired and more than 23,000 military personnel were discharged. Hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations linked to the movement were seized. The witch-hunt sometimes extended beyond Turkey's borders, with Turkish security services kidnapping Gülenists all over Central Asia, Africa and the Balkans. Despite the persecution, thousands of followers found refuge in Europe and also in the US, where their network remains active.

Their discreet infiltration of the state apparatus began years before, with the full support of then prime minister Erdogan, whose newly-formed Justice and Development Party (AKP) was sorely lacking in senior figures, having just won the parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2002. The aim was to have experienced Islamists at its disposal, capable of achieving the objectives set by the party, namely to seize the levers of state that had remained in the hands of Kemalist officials and the military. Only the Gülen movement could provide Erdogan with such expertise.

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