The Guardian: China's sinking coal mining towns and villages – in pictures

Thousands of residents in China’s Shanxi province have been evacuated as villages next to mines have started sinking, after decades of reckless coal mining

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Politico: The cleric, the coup and the conspiracy

Gülen’s followers call their movement Hizmet or ‘service,’ and they have focused largely on education. Gülenists have opened schools, charities and other institutions around the world, including in the United States, while also promoting interfaith harmony. Although some of his early sermons are reported to have contained some anti-Semitic tones, Gülen said his views have evolved, and that some of his words were taken out of context. Readers responding to a 2008 survey by Foreign Policy and Prospect named him the world’s No. 1 public intellectual.

Gülen said he doesn’t personally run the many institutions his followers have built, even if he is their inspiration. His movement is funded through donations from its members and by the profits from a range of businesses. Gülen himself is also believed to have a number of financial holdings and makes money through sales of his books. He firmly denies that he ordered, or even inspired, the July 15-16 coup attempt in Turkey, which left some 270 people dead and many more wounded.

This is not the first time that Gülen has been accused of trying to overthrow Turkey’s political leaders. Back in the late 1990s, he faced similar accusations under what was then a secular government. As an Islamist, albeit a relatively moderate one, Gülen’s teachings had long drawn the suspicions of Turkey’s secular elite. [...]

Some analysts describe this explanation as spin, noting that tensions between Gülen and Erdoğan appeared well before public discussion of a strong presidency. The analysts say Gülen, or at least his followers, and Erdoğan appeared to differ on an array of issues, including how to deal with Kurdish separatists and how to react to the tumult in a region following the Arab Spring revolutionary movements. “I’ve heard them complain about Erdoğan’s accumulation of power, and you can see it in Gülenist news coverage,” said Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. “But has it been a longstanding position? Nope.” [...]

At the same time, however, documents unveiled by WikiLeaks indicated that U.S. officials have had their own suspicions about Gülen’s goals. In a classified 2009 cable, then-U.S. ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey noted that even other Islamists viewed the Gülen movement as “murky.”

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