Gülen should return to Turkey, Bahçeli says

ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News

The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party says his party is not planning to go to court over the tape scandal.

The head of Turkey’s nationalist opposition party has issued a challenge to an influential religious leader living abroad, saying he should return to Turkey if he wants to be involved in discussions about the country.

“Turkey has been trapped inside an equilateral triangle” of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, religious leader Fethullah Gülen and imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, according to Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, leader Devlet Bahçeli.

“I see benefit in the return of Gülen to Turkey to be able to know Turkey’s issues in depth,” he said in an interview with daily Milliyet published Thursday.

In the interview, Bahçeli also lashed out at the state institutions, accusing them of inaction in investigating and halting the release of hidden-camera footage that has rocked his party in recent weeks – a scandal in which he has accused Gülen of involvement.

“State institutions are indifferent to the developments. The experts of the theology departments are silent,” the MHP chief said. He added, however, that his party is not planning to go to court over the tape scandal.

Erdoğan suggested Wednesday that the country’s intelligence services had intervened in the scandal to stop the release of such tapes online.

With just weeks left to go before the June 12 general election, the MHP has been hit with three waves of a tape scandal featuring the online release of R-rated footage of senior party members, ending the political career of five of them.

The MHP brass has accused Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of being behind the tape releases, which they claim are part of a plot to keep the MHP from receiving enough votes to be represented in Parliament.

Bahçeli has also indirectly targeted the Fethullah Gülen community, a Turkish religious group whose leader lives in the United States, as the source of this plot. Gülen denied the allegations in a written statement this week.

Speaking to Milliyet, Bahçeli said Gülen’s return to Turkey would allow the religious leader to offer better guidance and make healthier evaluations.

Gülen has been living in the United States since 1999. Legal barriers before his return were removed last year but his aides argue his health condition does not allow him to take overseas flights for the time being.

Speaking Thursday in the western province of Edirne as part of his election campaign, Bahçeli described the June polls as “crucially important,” saying that what the ruling party has brought in the nine years of its government was unemployment and poverty.

“These are the realities of Turkey. There is a huge difference between this reality and what Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is saying on television,” he said.

via Gülen should return to Turkey, Bahçeli says – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.