Dialogue Platform’s Statement on Developments in Turkey
Fethullah Gülen (Photo: herkul.org)
Date posted: July 16, 2016
Dialogue Platform which is connected with Gulen’s mouvement Hizmet, in a Statement denied any involvment in Turkey’s coup.
The Statement says:
“Our Honorary President Fethullah Gulen has consistently advocated for democracy and insisted “there is no return from the democracy” at every stage of his life.
Hizmet participants have always denounced the military interventions and demonstrated the attitude for the peaceful coexistence, freedom and democracy. Thus, Dialogue Platform strongly condemns any attempt to throw an elected government by military coup.
We have always supported development of Turkey’s democracy and its membership to European Union despite of the increasing anti-democratic practices in recent years.
President Erdogan and his close circles’ blame on the Hizmet Movement is very irresponsible and concerning.
We hope that Turkey will overcome these difficult days and take this sad incident as an opportunity to strengthen its democracy.”
A total of 84 American foreign policy experts have written a bipartisan letter to US President Barack Obama, expressing concern that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic actions and demagoguery are not only subverting Turkey’s political institutions and values but also endangering the US-Turkey relationship.
Defending Hizmet
I have seen nothing but beauty from the Hizmet movement. I have taught at Hizmet schools in Turkey and seen teachers who work 18 hour long days seven days a week neglecting their own families in order to teach poor villagers in Sanliurfa.
17 Nigerian-Turkish schools caught in Ankara coup crossfire
The Turkish president actually requested 170 countries where the schools are established and run for the same favour, but while only two, including Somalia, obliged on the grounds of their indebtedness to Turkey, the other countries have either refused or are undecided as they asked for proof of Erdogan’s claim.
Erdogan and Gulen: Inevitable Clash?
Unlike Turkey’s classical Islamic activists, Gulen always distanced himself from politics, and like Said Nursi, his main source of inspiration, his message was focused on grassroots social activism, most importantly an education combining both Islam and modern science. Hizmet’s main goal was social: raising a new “golden” generation fusing moderate Muslim and Modern ethics to become the backbone of Turkey’s society and bureaucracy and its messengers to the world.
Love is A Verb – forthcoming documentary on the Gülen Movement
Love Is A Verb is an examination of a social movement of Sufi-inspired Sunni Muslims that began in Turkey in the l960s and now spans across the globe. The group is called Hizmet, the Turkish word for “service” or The Gülen Movement after its inspiration and teacher, Fethullah Gülen, a man TIME magazine named as one of the most influential leaders in the world in 2013 for “…preaching a message of tolerance.”
Erdoğan is helping Hizmet community in three ways
If President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had given an assurance to the world, saying, “The Hizmet movement never resorts to violence and it is an antidote to Islamist violence,” people would still have nurtured doubts and they still would have asked if they, like Islamists, would resort to violence under duress.
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