Turkish and Albanian governments have done important work in the fight against the organization of the exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesperson of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, confirmed such efforts to the Anadolu Agency on Friday.
Kalin assured that Turkey will not allow Gulen’s organization to hurt Turkey’s bilateral relations by manipulating the laws in countries where it operates.
“As our President [Erdogan] has reiterated, this organization is a serious danger to the countries it is represent, and, at the same time, we know they conduct manipulative activities to poison relations between countries it operates and our country [Turkey],” claimed Kalin via Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish government has labeled Gulen’s organization a terrorist organization and has blamed it for staging the failed coup of August 2017 in Turkey. Albania, and other Balkan countries, have come under continued pressure from the Turkish government to outlaw Gulen’s organization expel all those that Turkey has marked as followers of Fethullah Gulen.
Gulen’s organization operated for years a network of elementary and high schools in Albania, as well as a university. Those owned by Gulen-affiliated organizations have been sold to a company based in The Netherlands, likely due to the increasing unfriendly business climate they were facing in Albania.
