Tag: Fethullah Gülen

  • Let Mr. Erdogan Fight His Own Battles

    Let Mr. Erdogan Fight His Own Battles

  • Turkey’s Wrong Turn

    Turkey’s Wrong Turn

    By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

    Goturrr

    Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was in Brussels last week seeking to repair relations with Europe, but the first place to look for a solution is within himself. Once hailed as the leader of a model Muslim democracy, he has created a political disaster at home, transforming Turkey into an authoritarian state that poses dangers not just for itself but for its allies in NATO, including the United States.

    The latest turmoil has its roots in a political war between Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and his former close allies who follow Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Islamic scholar who lives in Pennsylvania. The tensions erupted into the open last month with a corruption probe that led to the resignation of four government ministers and threatened to ensnare Mr. Erdogan’s family. The prime minister called the probe a “coup attempt” and blamed a “secret organization” within the judiciary and police directed by the Gulen movement and serving “foreign powers” like the United States and Israel. The government has since purged hundreds of police officials and prosecutors and sought to assert control over the judiciary. It also drafted legislation expanding the government’s power to appoint judges and prosecutors, further breaching judicial independence, and has prevented journalists from reporting freely. All the while, Mr. Erdogan has spewed endless conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric, even hinting at American treachery and suggesting that the American ambassador might be expelled.

    The probe and Mr. Erdogan’s reaction may well be politically motivated. There are important local elections in March. But Mr. Erdogan should be insisting that the probe be fair and transparent, not trying to derail it. His ruthless ways and his attempt to crush dissent are not new, as the crackdown against demonstrators during protests last June showed. Such actions trample on democratic reforms demanded by the European Union as part of Turkey’s bid for union membership, which may be more in peril than ever, and are increasingly at odds with the ground rules for NATO members.

    Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was right when he said in Brussels that the Europeans must demand that Turkey return to the rule of law. The Obama administration also needs to send a strong message about the damaging course Mr. Erdogan is pursuing. Whether Turkey nurtures its hard-won democracy, which has contributed to its impressive economic growth, or turns authoritarian is as critical to regional stability and to its NATO allies as it is to Turks.

    A VERSION OF THIS EDITORIAL APPEARS IN PRINT ON JANUARY 28, 2014, IN THE INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES.
  • TURKEY’S POOR PLAYER

    TURKEY’S POOR PLAYER

    We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them–
    to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it.
    That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That’s very important.
    If you don’t forgive yourself you’ll never be able to forgive anybody else
    and you’ll go on committing the same crimes forever.

                                                       ANOTHER COUNTRY, James Baldwin

    He bores me, this Erdoğan. A typically flawed tragic hero, now in his political death throes. The story’s been told a million times and the ending is always the same. And Erdoğan, like all the others, deserves it. Now the sharks are gathering. They pumped him up to do their job, this street-wise corner boy from Istanbul. Fingered early, he rose to power. He thought he was prime minister but he was really a pawn. To make up for that shattering awareness, he yelled, scowled and sneered for ten tedious years. They told him to be a tough guy. And he tried. But he thought tough meant straight ahead all the time, all the time with the mouth going. For a while that didn’t bother them. They thought he knew his country. But now they (and the world) know better.
    It must have been nice to go to the White House and be hailed by the back-slapping Bush as the leader of the Turks. And because he knew no English and he thought Bush did, and because his advisors were yes-men and a few yes-women, Tayyip became the boss of the American pipedream about mixing moderate Islam with democracy. It will lead to peace in the Middle East, they said. And all honor and glory and riches to himself, he thought. And all he had to do was ramrod some changes on secular, democratic Turkey changing it into another country. They told him more: that he would be in a privileged relationship with the USA, like Israel. You have a free hand. And we will help you out in all respects. And Tayyip saw that it was a good deal and was pleased, so pleased that he always smiled broadly in the White House. The secular, democratic Turks at home in Turkey were surprised that their nation’s leader always looked constipated at home yet so frivolous in America. But it was merely noted in passing because they were mostly asleep, like the Turkish Army. No one even noticed that for his election night acceptance speech he wore a solid, Islamic green tie.
    Later, when Obama came to Turkey spouting about “predominantly Christian America” and “predominantly Muslim Turkey,” Tayyip suddenly understood, like Archimedes floating in his bathtub. Shouting EUREKA! to himself, Tayyip had suddenly discovered DIVISION as a political process. Now you’re talking my language! So Tayyip went to work. He divided Sunni from Alevites, “his” people from the rest of the Turks, rakı and beer drinkers from ayran drinkers, head covered women from women whose hair blew gaily in the wind. He separated  “his” people from terrorists (everyone else), “his” propaganda-spewing media from the few honest newspapers. And now, with the help of his bewildering foreign minister, has separated Turkey from the rest of the world. But make no mistake about one thing…Erdoğan has an incredible genius for unifying. Now, except for “his” people,” the world is unified AGAINST him.
    He also has a genius for making money, tons of it.
    In a decade he went from whining about how he couldn’t raise his family on a prime minister’s salary to countless wealth. His family owns fleets, land, everything imaginable. Rumors of Swiss bank accounts abound. A former American ambassador said as much. Erdoğan’s foreign excursions always include hundreds of his bad-actor* business cronies. America made a warrior out of him, pointing out the boundless financial opportunities inherent in destroying nations. Hence his avid embrace of the now catastrophic “Arab Spring.” Obama’s baseball bat and America’s fat wallet did wonders for Tayyip’s cooperative spirit. He could be a team player particularly after he became the team leader. Bye-bye Gadaffi! Who needs human rights awards when you can lead democracy’s charge across North Africa. Bye-bye Assad! Your uncovered wife makes mine nervous. So Hello NATO! Hello Al-Qaeda! Hello hell!
    gaddafi erd  erd assad1
    And here’s another “hello.” It goes way back. Hello Feto!  a diminutive and derisive nickname for Fethullah Gülen.  Gülen is a weepy, elementary-school-educated “Islamic leader” (and CIA asset) who lives in bucolic, well-protected splendor in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. A Green Card holder courtesy of his CIA sponsors, he is a treacherous financial dynamo seemingly lifted from a James Bond novel. His Movement, (cemaat in Turkish) has completely infiltrated and undermined secular Turkey. He had revealed his intent long before he had escaped from the Turkish courts into the loving arms of the CIA. A tape of his treacherous words surfaced in 1999 wherein he said:

    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…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. **

    Fethullah-Gulen-Kuran-YetimOf course then, Gülen was talking treason. Today, he is acting treasonously. His infiltration of the Turkish state is everywhere. In the judiciary, the media, the military, the state police, the parliament and in the ruling party. It is well known that the Gülen movement’s heavy hand is instrumental in the legal fiasco that has destroyed the credibility of the Turkish legal system. The same hand was instrumental in the astonishing and ongoing police violence from the Gezi Park Movement.

    Only a fool would fail to notice the common ground that Erdoğan and Gülen stand upon, united by their allegiance to the aims of the United States, fueled by cold, hard American dollars, ever encouraged by the cold, sneaky hand of the CIA. Erdogan controls everything in Turkey with his hands of stone. Thanks to their collaboration, the army’s professional leadership is in jail. The judicial system is rancid. There is neither justice nor democracy in Turkey but the police clubs, tear gas, water cannons, bullets (rubber and real) are everywhere. The police destroy all democratically demonstrating groups with the violence of Hitler’s Brownshirts. It is widely known that the Gulen movement played a major role in the legal fiasco called Ergenekon of which the prime minister dubbed himself chief prosecutor. The jail system is a penal industry by itself on the order of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s, The Gulag Archipelago. Telephone conversations, e-mail messages, are monitored. There is no privacy in Turkey. The prime minister encourages so-called “neighbors” to report all fellow neighbors if they dare bang on pots protesting the government. He claims such banging violates people’s privacy. There is no freedom of banging in Turkey either. The cleansing of leftist patriots continues, in the army and in all institutions controlled by the government. The  brutal crackdown on Gezi Park demonstrators continues in all its Erdoğanian fury. Call what’s happening in Turkey a post-modern extermination campaign. And the astonishingly unreliable political opposition acts as the ruling party’s best friend and may even be an active collaborator in the destruction of secular Turkey.  

    And Erdoğan? Outside Turkey he has ruined himself. His near delirious rants, preposterous claims, the insults flying, the ignorance of his advisors all fully displayed on the world stage. His rage, greed, and arrogance have brought him to comic levels. But his money and his bad-actor friends and advisors remain. And so does he prime minister. In any other country he would have long been rejected by the electorate forthwith. But as long as America says, yes, Erdoğan remains. So sad for Turkey to be the lapdog of the likes of Erdoğan, Fethullah Gulen and America. So sad for Islam to be linked with these two masters of deceit. So sad for the Turkish people to be harnessed to the moral corruption that is Turkish politicized Islam.   

    Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Erdogan betrayed a lot more for a lot more. Treachery has always been a good business, indeed an American specialty in their CIA-driven foreign policy. And it perfectly suits Erdoğan’s two-faced description of “his” Turkey as an “advanced democracy.” But now he stands alone, babbling nonsense, rich, naked to the world and disgraced. One wonders if he even knows this much. What price this glory? What price this treason?

    Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and to-morrow,
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
    To the last syllable of recorded time;
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
    Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
    And then is heard no more. It is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing.

    MACBETH, William Shakespeare

    lucky waiting

    Cem Ryan, Ph.D. 
    25 August 2013
    Istanbul

     

    NOTES:

    * According to the Merriman-Webster Dictionary, a “bad actor” is an unruly,
    turbulent, or contentious individual.

    ** See Claire Berlinski’s excellent article, Who Is Fethullah Gülen? in City Journal, Autumn 2012.

     

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  • Ergenekon Fethullah Gülen üyeleri tarafından yürütüldü

    Ergenekon Fethullah Gülen üyeleri tarafından yürütüldü

    Siyonizmin Fethi

    04.08.2013

    Binlerce sayfayı bulan Ergenekon iddianamelerini okuyan ve “Gerçek ile Fantezi Arasında: Türkiye’nin Ergenekon Soruşturması” isimli raporun yazarı Gazeteci Gareth Jenkins, “Ergenekon soruşturması, şu an Başbakan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ile bir iktidar mücadelesine girmiş olan Fethullah Gülen hareketinin üyeleri tarafından yürütüldü” yorumunda bulundu.

    BBC Türkçe’den yansıtılan habere göre Jenkins sona yaklaşılan Ergenekon davasına ilişkin soruları yanıtladı. “Ergenekon soruşturması ilk başladığında pek çok kişi soruşturmayı yürütenlerin iddialarını ön kabul yoluyla algılamaya hazırdı. Türkiye komplo teorileri ile dolu ve derin devlet olarak bilinen Gladyo tarzı bir ağ Türkiye’nin modern tarihinin bir gerçeği” diyen Jenkins, insanlar yerleşik fikirlerini Ergenekon soruşturmasına yansıttığını söyledi. Yıllar geçtikçe hem Türkiye içinde hem Türkiye dışında davaya yönelik algının büyük ölçüde değiştiğinin altını çizen Jenkins, şunları kaydetti:

    “Şimdilerde davada, en azından derin bir çatlak olduğunu bilmeyen birini bulmanız çok zor. Sanırım pek çok kişi artık davanın siyasi motivasyonla üretilmiş olduğunu anladı.

    FETHULLAH GÜLEN ÜYELERİ TARAFINDAN YÜRÜTÜLDÜ

    Ergenekon soruşturması, şu an Başbakan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ile bir iktidar mücadelesine girmiş olan Fethullah Gülen hareketinin üyeleri tarafından yürütüldü. Yine de Ergenekon davası, hukukun üstünlüğünün nasıl görmezden gelinebileceğini ve Türkiye basınının baskı, kibir ve bazı mensuplarının ilkesizliği nedeniyle nasıl kontrol altına alınabileceğini göstererek Erdoğan’ın gittikçe otoriterleşen yönetim biçiminin temellerini attı. Eğer insanlar Ergenekon davasının başında, davanın gerçeklerine bakmayı başarsalardı ve hukukun üstünlüğü ve aynı fikirde olmadıkları insanların hakları için ayağa kalksalardı, bugün Ankara’da böylesine otoriter bir rejim ile karşı karşıya olmazdık.

    Yüzlerce sanığı ve bu kadar sıra dışı iddia ve suçlamaları içeren her dava, hem davanın taraftarlarını hem de ülkenin hukuk sistemini yargılamakla son bulur. Bu Türkiye ve Ergenekon soruşturmasının taraftarları ve destekçilerinin kötü şekilde başarısızlığa uğradığı bir sınav.

    Ergenekon iddianameleri, her siyasi şiddet eyleminden sorumlu olan hiyerarşik, merkezi olarak idare edilen ve Türkiye’nin modern tarihindeki her militan grubu yönetmiş; aynı zamanda nükleer, kimyasal ve biyolojik silahları uluslararası piyasaya satmaya hazırlanan bir örgüt suçlamasına yer veriyor. Tabii ki böyle bir örgüt yok.

    Ergenekon iddianameleri çok uzun, muhtemelen kasten böyle. Sağduyusunu yitirmemiş, iddianameleri okuyup böyle bir örgütün gerçekten var olduğuna inanan herkese karşı bunu savunurum.”

    “ERGENEKON DAVASININ KURBANI İKİ GRUP VAR”

    Derin devlet Türkiye modern tarihinin bir gerçeği olduğunu savunan Jenkins, “Ergenekon soruşturması başladığından beri, davayı destekleyenler, bunun derin devleti hedef aldığı iddia etti. Ancak Ergenekon iddianamelerini okuduğunuzda, niyetin bu olmadığı açık olarak ortaya çıkıyor. Derin devlet özerk ve yarı özerk çete ve grupların dokunulmazlık içinde faaliyet yürütmesiydi. Bu da Ergenekon soruşturması başlayana kadar hemen hemen ortadan kalkmıştı. Ergenekon davasının kurbanı iki grup var. Gruplardan biri soruşturmayı yürütenler tarafından doğrudan hedef alınanlar; özellikle açık şekilde absürt suçlamalar ve üretilmiş ‘delillerle’ suçlanan ve tutuklananlar. Diğer grup ise gerçek derin devletin kurbanlarından oluşuyor. Örneğin 1990’lı yıllarda Güneydoğu’da binlerce kişi ölüm mangaları tarafından öldürüldü. Onlar ve aileleri için adaleti sağlamak üzere hiçbir girişimde bulunulmadı. Ergenekon soruşturmasının en korkunç taraflarından biri de gerçek derin devletin bu kurbanlarının, davayı kendi siyasi amaçları için yürütenler tarafından kullanılmasıdır.

    Bu aynı zamanda, sevmedikleri insanları hedef aldığında Ergenekon davasını destekleyen ve arkadaşlarını hedef aldığında eleştiren; fakat gerçek derin devlet tarafından işlenen suçlar yüzünden adalet bekleyen insanlara hiçbir ilgi göstermeyen ‘liberal entelektüellere’ de uzanıyor” dedi.

    “AVCI İLE ŞIK’IN AYNI ÖRGÜTE AİT OLABİLECEĞİNİ DÜŞÜNEN HERKESİN BİR DAHA DÜŞÜNMESİ GEREKİR”

    Ergenekon davasında yargılananların paylaştıkları tek özelliğin hepsinin “Gülen hareketinin gerçekten veya öyle algılanan karşıtları veya rakipleri olması” olduğunu öne süren Jenkins, “Davayı kimin yürüttüğüne işaret eden başka pek çok kanıt var ama sadece suçlananların isimlerine bakmak da yeterli. Solculara yönelik kötü muameleyle ünlü sağcı eski emniyet müdürü Hanefi Avcı ile sosyalist gazeteci Ahmet Şık’ın aynı örgüte ait olabileceğini düşünen herkesin bir daha düşünmesi gerekir. Ama tabii ki, Avcı ve Şık, Gülen hareketi üyelerinin emniyet ve yargı sistemine nüfuz etmelerini ayrıntılandıran kitaplar yazmışlardı” ifadelerini de kullandı.

    Odatv

  • CONFIDENTIAL: Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva and Fethullah Gulen

    CONFIDENTIAL: Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva and Fethullah Gulen

    GulenRALLYING SUPPORT FOR THE HOCA

    8/4/2005 | classification: CONFIDENTIAL | Consulate Istanbul

    1. (C) Summary: In a farewell luncheon for Consul General, Istanbul Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva noted that he is wrestling with a difficult request from a local foundation for a letter in support of Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish-Muslim spiritual leader of a major Islamist lodge who is Halevacurrently residing in the United States. Haleva said that those who approached him indicated that Gulen will soon seek to adjust his immigration status in the United States, and needs the testimonial to address the belief in parts of the U.S. government that he is a “radical Islamist” whose moderate message cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda. This concern apparently stems in part from FBI documents that Gulen supporters received through a recent FOIA request in the U.S.. Separately, business contacts with links to Gulen confirmed the fact that they are soliciting such testimonials at Gulen’s personal request, while Istanbul Legat was also approached by police contacts with Gulenist links who asked that the bureau provide a “clean bill of health” for Gulen. End Summary.

    Source: wikileaks.ch