Unidentified individuals have graffitied offensive remarks on a wall of the Turkish Cultural Center (TCC) in the city of West Haven, Connecticut.
The graffiti echoes Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hate speech against the Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, with which the cultural center is affiliated.
The TCC has been serving the Turkish-American community in Connecticut for seven years. Mehmet Elmacı, the coordinator of the organization, told Turkish media outlets that the incident was unprecedented. “We are a cultural center that does not take part in politics. Our goal has been to share Turkey’s cultural heritage with our community. We condemn those individuals who are inspired by Erdoğan’s hate speech toward the Hizmet movement to write offensive remarks on our walls,” he said.
PM Erdoğan once defended Hizmet, said it was Feb. 28 [military coup] victim
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has recently accused the faith-based Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen of cooperating with coup perpetrators during the Feb. 28, 1997 post-modern coup era, defended the same movement at a parliamentary coup commission in 2012, when he said the movement’s followers had been victimized during the coup.
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Turkey’s ability to stop Kanter from living in the U.S. or playing in the NBA is basically non-existent. The U.S. won’t allow Turkey to extradite him. But Erdoğan’s government has an ulterior motive in attempting to intimidate Kanter. “The point of this exercise is to let Turks around the world know that none of them are safe, that they should not speak out against the government,” Joshua Landis said.
Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World
The Hizmet Movement is Turkey’s most influential Islamic identity community. Widely praised throughout the early 2000s as a mild and moderate variation on Islamic political identity, the Gülen Movement has long been a topic of both adulation and conspiracy in Turkey, and has become more controversial as it spreads across the world. In Gülen, Joshua D. Hendrick suggests that when analyzed in accordance with its political and economic impact, the Gülen Movement, despite both praise and criticism, should be given credit for playing a significant role in Turkey’s rise to global prominence.
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The European Union has denied claims by the Turkish press that it has, for the first time, called the Gülen movement a ‘terrorist’ organization in its upcoming progress report slated to be published on Tuesday. A source who spoke to Ahvalnews on the condition of anonymity categorically denied claims made by Turkish media sources.
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The Turkic American Alliance (TAA) has refuted the pro-government daily Sabah’s and Yeni Şafak’s claims of “treachery,” linking the Hizmet movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, with the passing of an “Armenian genocide” resolution at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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Fatih Tezcan, a pro-government columnist, said in a video that he is sure the Turkish state had embedded a secret agent in the Gülen movement and that now it is time for him to “terminate” Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. During his 1.08-minute video, Tezcan curses the Gülen movement and the US-based Gülen and says that the murder of Gülen is something desired by the entire Muslim world.
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