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.
Turkish minister: Gulenists are more dangerous than ISIL because they’re well-educated
Berat Albayrak, Turkish energy minister and son-in-law of President Tayyip Erdoğan, has said at a conference that people affiliated with the Gülen movement are more dangerous than Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants because they’re well educated and have “higher IQs” than his own.
How hateful discourse manipulates our perception
Claims have been made that these multi-billion-dollar deals have generated a huge hoard of funds for Erdoğan to buy off some media outlets through proxies, hire new sets of journalists to defend his government line and even convert critical analysts with fat checks to prod them to the other side of the aisle. And these claims also explain why some media groups are conducting black propaganda against the Hizmet movement.
The genesis of the hatred against Gulen and the Hizmet Movement
By Kenyan Nomad May 2, 2012 Every now and then, we are subjected to a purportedly investigative report by a ‘respected’ (pun intended) journalist about famed Turkish Scholar, Fethullah Gulen and the movement he inspired: The Hizmet (service) Movement. On reading the said article or report, we realize it is the same innuendos, fabrications and the macabre claims […]
The view from Brussels
The idea in Brussels, like among all sound-minded people here in Turkey, rather, is that the Erdoğan government is using the “parallel state” conspiracy theory as a pretext to suppress the investigation into the gravest bribery and corruption charges in the history of the country and destroy the achievements of the last 10 years in terms of democracy and the rule of law.
What’s Friendship Got to Do With [Mr. Gulen’s] Extradition?
On a visit to Washington to lobby for Gülen’s extradition, Nationalist Action party parliamentarian Kamil Aydin expressed his belief that “America is going to refuse losing Turkey as a good partnership in the region.” But even if Turkish politicians do not believe that America operates according to the rule of law, they should at least be aware that most Americans are proud to think that it does.
Who is Fethullah Gulen? (by National Catholic Reporter)
By blaming Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen movement for the coup attempt, Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian tendencies have only increased as witnessed by the tens of thousands arrested and detained, and the radical curtailing of free speech. It now appears that in Mr. Erdogan’s hands Turkey’s future and that of the Middle East will be less democratic, less stable and more tumultuous than ever.
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