Gulen followers live in fear as Erdogan purge spreads to Germany

WITH its leafy playing fields and historic buildings on the site of a former British Army barracks, the Wilhelmstadt School in the Berlin suburb of Spandau could easily be mistaken for a English boarding school. The only sign that something is different is the pair of schoolgirls walking arm in arm through the campus, clad in long shapeless coats and Islamic headscarves.

Wilhelmstadt is one of the most successful Turkish immigrant schools in Berlin. But in recent weeks it has found itself on the front line of a new confron- tation that has divided Germany’s Turkish minority.

Because Wilhelsmstadt is run by followers of Fethullah Gulen, the man the Turkish government accuses of being behind last month’s failed coup attempt. It now appears President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s controversial crackdown against Mr Gulen’s movement has spread to Germany.

Boycott lists are going around on social media, urging people to avoid shops and businesses run by alleged adherents of the cleric. Michael Müller, the mayor of Berlin, says he was approached by the Turkish government to take action against schools like Wilhelsmtadt but he refused, making “it clear that Turkish conflicts have nothing to do with us”.

There are an estimated four million people of Turkish origin living in the country, including 1.5 million Turkish citizens. Tensions between Mr Erdogan’s supporters and Gulenists have become so bad that Angela Merkel at the weekend also called on Turks not to “import conflicts into Germany”.

Osman Ors, a Berlin imam and follower of Mr Guülen said: “A friend of mine went to pray at his regular mosque in Göttingen and some one started tak- ing pictures of him with his phone.

“Then they told my friend you’re not welcome here anymore. We don’t want any traitors in our mosque or our city.”

But Kadir Inonir, a worshipper at a Berlin mosque was adamant: “President Erdogan may be a bad thing for Angela Merkel, for the Americans, but for his country and his people, for us, he is a hero.” His mosque, like almost every Turkish mosque in Germany, was built by DITIB, the German wing of a Turkish government agency which also supplies the imams.

Mr Ors says Turkey is now using DITIB to spread its crackdown against the Gulen movement into Germany. He is one of the few Turkish imams in Germnay who doesn’t work for DITIB at Berlin’s House of One, a project to create a joint place of prayer for Christians, Muslims and Jews. A German citizen born to Turkish parents, he says he feels more German than Turkish.

But now he is on the defensive. He works for Forum Dialog, a Gulenist NGO dedicated to interfaith dialogue.

Celal Findik, the NGO’s director, said: “I got threatening messages on my mobile phone, calling me a traitor and saying Mr Gulen will be hanged. My whole family is in Turkey and I’d like to visit them, but it isn’t safe for me now.” He showed some of the boycott lists that have been circulating on social media, urging German Turks to avoid businesses with alleged links to Mr Gulen. They are not just large concerns: they include a local ice cream parlour.

The question of the exiled cleric’s guilt remains unresolved for now, at least outside Turkey. But the extent to which his followers can be considered to be complicit in any plot, if there was one, goes to the heart of Gulenism.

Former members speak of an organisation which seeks to control every details of its adherents’ lives.