Turkish PM calls for boycott of Gülen movement’s schools
Date posted: February 27, 2014
ISTANBUL
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has geared up his rhetoric against the movement of U.S. based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, calling for a boycott of the movement’s schools.
“Leave the prep schools and schools of [the movement]. Say: Public schools are enough for us,” Erdoğan said during a rally in the southern province of Burdur on Feb. 27.
“Public schools will be enough. If parents want additional lessons for their children on the weekends, we will do it. They will be free of charge,” he added.
Erdoğan accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating the massive graft probe targeting his government, but usually refers to the group through indirect terms such as “parallel state.”
The ongoing turmoil in the country increased this week, with the prime minister facing unprecedented accusations of corruption after the leak of incriminating phone conversations between himself and his son, in the wake of the initial police raids conducted on Dec. 17.
Erdoğan has called the tape a fabrication and accused the Gülen movement over it, while the opposition has urged him to resign.
Princeton professor accuses Gulen of orchestrating Turkish coup, Harvard professor disagrees
Edward Owen, professor of Middle East history at Harvard, said that he did not believe in Reynold’s certainty of Gülen’s guilt. Owen added that when a person writes “alarmist pieces” like Reynolds’, the main audience for the pieces is Washington. “It is a way of calling attention to yourself, and I imagine that Professor Reynolds would like his name registered by the people in Washington as somebody to go to, to employ, when there is a change in administration in Washington,” Owen said.
Former intel chief calls for use of ASALA, MOSSAD tactics to kill Gülen followers
İsmail Hakkı Pekin, a former intelligence chief of the Turkish General Staff, has suggested that Turkey make use of tactics it used against Armenian militant group, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), and those employed by Israeli intelligence agency MOSSAD against Nazis in order to assassinate followers of the Gülen movement abroad.
Zaman Stanizai on Fethullah Gulen and Hizmet Movement
Dr. Zaman Stanizai is a Professor of Mythological Studies at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California and he teaches Political Science at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has written on political theory with emphasis on the viability of third world states encountering globalization, and on political identity focusing on the politicization of ethnic, national, and religious identities as a contributing factor in regional and world conflicts.
Behind the war over prep schools [in Turkey]
Notably, all this comes while the tension between the government, especially Erdoğan himself, and the Gülen Movement is deepening. In fact, both groups form part of the “religious conservatives,” and used to be allies against the old secularist guard. However, their differences have become increasingly pronounced and have resulted recently in an increasingly bitter war of words.
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IT IS a long way from the Anatolian plains to a campus in the heart of London, where eminent scholars of religion deliver learned papers. And the highlands that used to form the Soviet border with China, an area where bright kids long for an education, seem far removed from a three-storey house in Pennsylvania, […]
Pak-Turk schools hold graduates moot
The school administration believes that the action is taken to appease Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who believes that the school promotes and teaches his arch-rival and cleric Fetullah Gulen’s teachings. “We have gone through the school curriculum during our time and have not found them imparting any extremism ideology or anything that goes against the interests of Pakistan,” said one of the graduates.
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