Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Ankara (Agenzia Fides) - For the first time a Turkish media has explicitly accused Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I of being an accomplice in the failed coup last July 15, organized, according to Ankara by Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen - currently in exile in the USA - and his Hizmet movement. On Tuesday, August 30, Aksam newspaper published a front-page article to accredit the alleged connivance of the CIA and the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the "gulenista" coup. Aksam connects the attempted coup with the rapprochement between Putin's Russia and Erdogan's Turkey, after the clashes of the recent past, and cites as evidence of the alleged link between Bartholomew and Gulen an article, attributed to Arthur Hughes, now US ambassador in Yemen, which appeared in mid-August on www.orientalreview.org site, which contained considerations on the alleged interest of the ecumenical Patriarchate to an overthrow of the apparatus of power headed by Erdogan.
The same Hughes - as Fides learns - denied being the author of the article - which then appears as a fake - obtaining the immediate removal from the web, and now also issued a denial of the article published by Aksam. The article of the Turkish newspaper is also illustrated with photos that show Gulen and Patriarch Bartholomew together, dating back to the nineties of last century. In 1998, before moving to the US, Gulen had also met John Paul II at the Vatican. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 01/09/2016)
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