Even Daesh, which is known to be skillful in employing media and technology, is almost nothing when compared to the Gülenist Organization. While the Gülenist media conducted the usual media business on one side, they were working for the elimination of figures or organizations, which are critical of them or may disrupt their short-term, midterm or long-term targets. A short time after the news on the media, the Gülenists within the security forces and the judiciary were starting to operate and make comments on the issue which enforced the ideas been propagated by their own media outlets.

Thousands of Gülenists were able to fill posts in the judiciary, security forces and bureaucracy; sometimes they openly said they were Gülenists, sometimes they just assumed other identities, concealing their own identities: leftist, extreme leftist, right-wing, agnostic, deist, laic or Islamist, etc. This is also true for their members within the ranks of the media and the academia. To camouflage their identities like a chameleon until the time is right is the characteristic of this organization, which differentiates it from the other terrorist organizations.

It was recently revealed that they were also stealing the answers to various exams, including the military, civil service and university entrance exams. It should be expressed that these people, Gülenists, weren’t just waiting for the answers to the exams; they were also hard-working and diligent. In politics, they infiltrated not only the ruling party, but they have infiltrated almost all existing political, social and religious movements, including many NGOs.

Not all of the Gülenists have been found and put to trial yet, as it is an organization, which has been active for 40 years. The majority of the people of Turkey had at least an acquaintance, neighbor, colleague or even family member which was linked with this organization. This is another characteristic of the organization; none of the members of other secret organizations could have such day-to-day interaction with the people. Moreover, none of the other organizations’ members could look so ordinary to the surprise of the people.

The leadership of this terrorist organization, which resembles modern Western sects like the Moon or Scientology is also different from the leaders of all existing terrorist organizations. You can’t see any PKK or Daesh leaders speaking from different points of view on a singular subject, as if they have numerous different personalities. Gülen, on the other hand, can act as if he is a great humanitarian, the leader of a violent terrorist organization, a slanderer or just an ordinary person. He doesn’t even speak to his followers in a singular voice. It isn’t possible to cover each and every example; however, there was a speech of his to his followers that was uncovered recently:

“If I am to bring harm to Hizmet [“Service” – what the organization calls itself] and my annihilation is a way to protect my institutions, I’m ready to sacrifice my life. Even if it is a cardinal sin, I’m ready to face it. Considering this, you may think about what I’m further willing to do. (…) God willing, we’re ready to face every challenge for the Service. If such sacrifice is necessary, we will let the flames consume us. If we are talking about this issue extensively, all of our friends out there should also do so.”

In short, Gülen is saying commit suicide instead of endangering the organization, even if it means going to hell. Expressing this idea in longer sentences is not a coincidence; it is a method, of course. Looking at these speeches as a whole, it is easy to realize that he is trying to show that everything he says is consistent, while, in fact, it is contradictory.

It took a long time for Turkey to recognize and understand the threat of this organization,  which was thought to be comprised of friendly and charitable people. Even after the realization of the threat they pose, if the state could have made a propaganda film out of the events transpired on the night of July 15, get on to a time machine and show it on the night of July 14, one still would have had a hard time believing that the Gülenist Organization could be that brutal or bloodthirsty.

Moreover, if one had seen putschists firing on the elderly, who begged the putschists to give up their guns and stop this madness, in this hypothetical movie, one would have still said that the Gülenists were being demonized. However, all of this was not in a film; there never was a film. It was the cold harsh reality. The Parliament was bombed, the Chief of Staff was held hostage, and National Intelligence Organization was strafed by helicopter gunships. More than 2,000 people were wounded. All of the people in Turkey felt that this was more of an invasion than a coup. Even today, this harsh reality seems as unreal as a science-fiction film. As it was covered by foreign media outlets, not only do the supporters of the government believe that the coup was perpetrated by this organization; even the government’s fiercest critics are of the same mind with the government in this matter.

Who killed Karlov, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to Ankara? According to the initial findings, there are many signs, ranging from the schools the shooter went to, to his contacts, which suggest that he is a Gülenist. On the other hand, it isn’t a secret that Gülen had established his game with external parameters through his schools all around the world. His ambition and attempts to shape Turkish foreign policy aren’t also a secret anymore. Two years ago, the organization commenced an operation with its infiltrators within the security forces and the judiciary, accusing the government of being corrupt, which actually targeted Turkey’s relations with Iran and the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq. While the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials targeting the military allowed the organization to open space for their own members, it also eliminated military personnel, which argued that Turkey should prioritize the Russia-China axis. The “demonic Iran” propaganda, which was being propagated by the organization’s supporters, has also been deciphered, as the relations between the US and Iran entered a new phase. Now that the US is opening up to Iran, Gülenists aren’t even mentioning Iran anymore, even while talking about Syria.

Suspecting that the assassin was a Gülenist right from the beginning isn’t without reason. No one would be surprised if he were a Gülenist masquerading as an Al-Nusra militant. Turkey knows very well that Gülenists are like chameleons, always masquerading. This was experienced by everyone ranging from highest-ranking bureaucrats to the ordinary people, in every part of life, from ordinary events to foreign policy.

Current president Park Geun-hye is the daughter of the former authoritarian president of South Korea, Park Chung-hee. Her father come to power by military coup in 1961 and stayed in power for two decades, until his assassination in 1979. That was not the first assassination attempt he saw, 4 years prior to his death, a North Korean spy had tried to kill President Park, but the assassin accidentally killed his wife, Yuk Young-Soo.

It is during this tumultuous time, after her mother’s death, that Geun-hye became susceptible to anything linking to her deceased mother. Very soon after her mother’s funeral, she met Choi Tae-min, who was a former soup factory worker, later pseudo-Christian (or some say shaman) cult leader claiming to heal people. Much like Rasputin, here was a rags-to-riches story of a soothsayer.

Choi Tae-min convinced the former dictator’s daughter that her mother did not die completely. Rather she had left an open path to reach her daughter when he saw her mother asking for help in a dream. Building a relationship with someone in such a vulnerable state, Choi was able to gain her trust and started to take advantage of this relationship. As a result, he collected a fortune based on his informal relationship with the president’s daughter. That type of relationship also gave him the power to enter into business dealings and to further expand her interests.

Many years after Park’s death, when finally South Korea had embarked upon a democratization process in 1987, Park Geun-hye appeared again on the political arena but this time not as a president’s daughter, but as an ambitious politician competing for parliament. After her long political career, Park Geun-hye finally got elected as President of South Korea in 2012. With Park’s election, Choi’s daughter Choi Soon-sil – characterized by the American embassy in Seoul in a WikiLeaks cable dated 2007 as the “Korean Rasputin” – allegedly became the power behind the throne. Choi, it is said, took full control of government, from preparing important speeches to gaining access to official secrets, and the Choi family transformed the Presidency into a puppet.

These shocking allegations have been revealed only recently. People have learnt about the relationship between the Choi family and Park Geun-hye, which had begun very early on in her life and continued seamlessly at every stage of Park’s success. The first event which exposed this dangerous sham was when Choi Soon-sil’s daughter was unfairly accepted to Ewha Womans University, a prestigious university in South Korea. This was the catalyst for wide spread protests, the perception that the “university entrance exam was the only way to climb the social ladder,” as was remarked by Kwon Jong-sang, a South Korean blogger, and through nepotism, the exam had been removed as a requirement for the powerful.

The interesting thing is that the Gülen cult works in much the same way. Suspicion was first raised about the organization when rumors emerged that exams for the military, police and other government institutions were stolen. Rigging the exam process to gain access to the state was seen as a crucial goal to attain power in the long run.

When it comes to the Turkish case, we see a similar pattern. An organization which tries to capture political power and state institutions using “celestial” power established in a long and historical context, with some differences. Fethullah Gülen, the cult leader just like father Choi, followed a more institutional path in order to gain power. While Choi had convinced the top of government directly, Gülen placed his loyal followers into the government and the state, step by step. The term “state infiltration” may be a Hollywood-style term for Westerners, but it was the exact case in Turkey. Gülenists had started the infiltration many decades earlier. He had even urged his followers to secretly infiltrate the state in a private meeting.

In terms of methodology, whereas the Chois were using pseudo-Christianity or according to some sources, shamanism as a base for cultic features, Fethullah Gülen’s was using Islamic teaching as a base for his miraculous, divine abilities.

Firstly, he had positioned himself above all other humans, and he was even setting up “meetings” with Prophet Muhammad every Thursday, according to one of his former followers. Probably in one of those meetings, he even received an order from the Prophet for “doubling the tweets” (referring to the tweets for the battle against the government by his followers in 2013). He also said that the Prophet came to the International Turkish Olympiads, an annual Gülenist event. After convincing his followers of his superior position, all members became ready for any order coming from the top of the pyramid.

Secondly, Gülen started establishing huge networks, foundations and businesses as well as collecting money from members. Even if some fundraising ended up being used for lobbying activities for Hillary Clinton, because the members are strictly tied to the cult, no objection were ever raised.

Thirdly, the most significant part was education. As mentioned above, many of his followers were stationed in police departments, army, judiciary, political parties, media etc. According to a statement from a military official facing charges of being a leader of the July 15 coup attempt, the military entrance exam’s questions were given to Gülenists as early as 1989. The long-term purpose of education was clear: to raise students from rural areas and use the promise of upward social mobility to make them loyal in order to carryout given tasks. When the government realized how it was entirely surrounded by Gülenists, it was very hard to get rid of the virus all at once. After all, it was a group of people hypnotized by a Choi-ish style, not rational foes.

Most people assume others, including political leaders, behave rationally, as is described in game theories. But the cases of South Korea’s Choi Soon-sil and Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen show even in our “modernity” this may not be the case: individuals, even those in important positions of responsibility, may be motivated by emotional and irrational thinking, instead of the rational reasoning one would expect from modern theories of political science.