Can you talk about this movement in some detail please? How are they perceived in Turkey? Are they radical or peaceful? I know their is a wikipedia page but don't know how accurate it is. One of my colleagues in America belongs to this movement and now he is scared to visit Turkey.
Gulen : "You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it …
You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here."
source :
http://freedomoutpost.com/worlds-most-dangerous-islamist-alive-well-and-living-in-pennsylvania/
I advise to read it to have more information. This article was made in 2013, another was write in 2009 but I cannot find it now.
Gulen's goal is power, they infiltrate all state administration, the police, the army.....they have thousand school in the world, hundreed in US. They have bank, journal, media, firm.....
Contrary to Daech or other terrorist group, they don't talk about jihad or killing and they don't recrut their member in internet....they form their own member thank to their school and then they put them in strategist post in the country.
They are the smart terrorist.
During the cold war, the US's govt fund them, like they did for the taliban, thinking they would be good opposition to URSS's communism idealogy.
Edit :
Of course, before the coup etat many people, even many of their member was not aware, what Gulen was able and willing to do.
You friend have good reason to don't go to Turkey, I advise him to don't come in the country for 5 years.