Turkey coup: What is Gulen movement and what does it want?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for last week’s bloody attempted coup.

Suspected Gulenists are now being purged in their thousands in a wave of arrests and sackings and Mr Erdogan has declared a state of emergency.

But what do we know about the movement, and what does it want?

Gulenists incessantly advertise Bill Clinton’s speech at the Third Annual Friendship Dinner organized by the Turkish Cultural Center of New York (a Gulenist organization) at the Waldorf Astoria on September 25, 2008.  The video of Clinton’s brief speech has been publicized on the internet by several Gulenist organizations,

and has become one of the Gulenists’ favorite defense weapons.  Whenever anything critical of the Gulen Movement or Gulen charter schools has appeared in the press, Gulenists have touted this speech as a full-fledged endorsement that they insist must instantly dispel any doubts ever raised about Fethullah Gulen and his followers.  The weight that Gulenists put on this speech seems quite out of proportion to its actual content; Clinton mentions Gulen only once in the entire speech, and never praises him directly.