A woman is suing her husband after he joined a bizarre cult that believes in aliens and is linked to the death of a man who threw himself in the Thames in London and drowned.
Bagdat Polat has filed for divorce in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, accusing her husband Metin Polat of ‘psychological and physical violence’ after he joined the ‘World Brotherhood Union Mevlana Supreme Foundation’.
The foundation is reportedly a bizarre sect led by a “female sheikh” who died several times but each time was reincarnated after she was “healed by three aliens” and the Turkish man who died in London had apparently been trying to copy her miracle.
Bagdat wants to divorce Metin, who she married in 2003, after he joined the cult some five years ago and “things changed”.
Bagdat is quoted as saying in the legal filing, cited by local media outlet Hurriyet, that “he joined them five years ago. Then things changed. Once, he told me that ‘I’d rather die than leave the foundation’. He used psychological and physical violence against me.”
She is asking for TRY 2 million (GBP 156,000) in compensation as well as monthly child support to the tune of TRY 13,000 (GBP 1,014).
The woman is alleging that her husband started believing that “the foundation’s ‘Knowledge Book’ was superior to the Quran” and in “cosmic energies”.
She reportedly said in her filing: “He attends foundation meetings three times a week, each lasting five hours. I don’t know what he is doing all that time. I am a mother, and I am worried for my children.”
According to publicly available data on the website of the Istanbul-based foundation, which is active in 33 countries, the leader is 98-year-old Bulent Corak, also known as the “female sheikh”, Hurriyet reports.
It is said that Corak was supposedly “saved by three aliens wearing diving suits” when she was ill, and she reportedly claimed: “I come back to life after all my deaths.”
Metin Polat disagrees with the court action and reportedly said in a statement: “My wife’s allegations are groundless.”
He added, after reportedly saying that the foundation is legal and teaches people about love: “My wife has taken some of my words that I said as a joke for real.”
Hurriyet reported that the ‘foundation’ made headlines in 2018 when a Turkish man living in London died after jumping into the River Thames.
His family reportedly found out that the man had regularly been sending money to the foundation before he decided to “incarnate again” as “death by water is not a real death.”
The newspaper said that Corak also sees herself as “immortal” because she can “incarnate again and again”.
