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8/17/11

Turkey:Fetullah Gulen: Interfaith peacemaker or the new Ayatollah?

It all started in 2007 when an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government in 2002 was discovered, followed by a new conspiracy theory in 2010. Many Turkish and Western pundits believe that the plot called Ergenekon was a fabrication to enable the government to get rid of opposition. Hundreds of detainees included not only officers but unlikely plotters such as leftist journalists, politicians, academics, and labour activists. Some detainees died in jail without knowing the charges against them. The latest raid against journalists was carried out to prevent the publication of a book titled “The Imam’s Army”, copies of which circulate on the Internet. It was rumored that even Wikileaks took an interest in the book and was going to release it on April 11th.

The Imam referred to in the book is Fetullah Gulen, a Muslim missionary that has been living in exile in the United States to avoid indictment on sedition charges by Turkey’s former secularist government. Gulen has a well-financed organization with religious schools and followers in every major city in Canada, United States, Europe and Central Asia. Nobody knows the source of his funds although many Turks believe it’s the CIA. Secularist Turks fear that Gulen’s followers in Turkey have infiltrated key positions of the police and bureaucracy and that he will make a spectacular comeback to declare an Islamic Republic like Ayatollah Khomeini after the last obstacle, the secularist army officer corps, has been neutered.

Apparently nobody is safe from being named a suspect of conspiracy to overthrow the AKP government. A 76-year-old woman that ran a school for the education of underprivileged women was arrested and jailed for six months. She died shortly after being released. Canada has started to receive a new wave of refugee applications from Turkey. Some claim they are wrongfully hounded as Ergenekon conspiracy suspects, while others claim that women’s rights are being abrogated by the Islamist government. Under Turkish law suspects can be detained for up to 10 years without a trial. Ironically, the Turkish military is the victim of the same obsolete laws from the Mussolini era that the secularist establishment used against opposition in the name of national security, and which the AKP government has shown no intention to reform. While PM Erdogan owes his popularity and latest election success to his pro-democracy rhetoric, he’s on record as having declared in 1998 that democracy is not an end in itself, but merely a vehicle for a higher purpose.

For more: Turkey’s Silent Civil War: Top Military Commanders Resign: "Fetullah Gulen: Interfaith peacemaker or the new Ayatollah?


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