Why was Mr. Gulen’s name brought up in the coup attempt in Turkey?
Date posted: July 17, 2016
Q: Do you know why the president (Erdogan) needed to bring your name up in this [coup attempt]?
Fethullah Gulen: He (Mr. Erdogan) has always had a reaction to those who do not obey him since the beginning.
As I previously expressed in other occasions, maybe, he was concealing some of his feelings.
There are things they were not able to achieve worldwide. People in the Hizmet Movement opened schools in 170 countries.
They tried to open Yunus Emre houses in 14-15 locations but they could not be successful. Turkish Olympiads displeased them.
Before founding the [AK] Party, he came to consult with me about founding the party. I met with him twice. One is when he came to ask my opinion about founding the [AK] Party. I suppose, he went to other people as well. It was not only a matter of asking opinion but also seeking support. I expressed my own considerations at the time.
Then my friends told me this. After he met with me in the 5th floor (Altunizade, Istanbul), when he was in the elevator, he said to the person next to him “we need to defeat them, vanquish them first.”
That is, they do not want any alternative formation, any service to exist.
Yavuz Baydar June 14, 2012 Is it the movement attacking the government, or vice versa? Some believe that it is, some hope that it is, some deny that it is and many others feel deeply concerned that it is. I tend to belong to the latter camp. It is undeniable that the Hizmet movement (aka […]
Separate state and religion
Turkey needs to face the fact that experience gained over the course of almost a century has shown that the marriage of state and religion is detrimental to both. If Turkey is to ever consolidate a liberal and pluralist kind of democracy, state and religion need to be separated, and freedom for believers and nonbelievers alike has to be secured.
Turkey Heads Toward Radical Islamic Dictatorship
Thousands have been arrested. Civil rights are suspended. People are jailed with no way to consult lawyers or present a defense. The coup has become an excuse for Erdoğan to purge state institutions, and even the private sector, of his critics, regardless of their guilt with regard to the insurrection. The Turkish government — and a 100% state-controlled media — has accused the U.S. government of being behind the coup attempt itself and harboring its purported mastermind, Fetullah Gulen.
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In Pennsylvania, Gülen and his aides scrambled to denounce the coup attempt as it unfolded. “As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt,” Gülen said in a statement, referring to Turkey’s spotty democratic history. The U.S. also was quick to condemn the coup attempt, but not quick enough for many in the Turkish government and media.
Kimse Yok Mu launches large-scale aid campaign for Syrian refugees
İPEK ÜZÜM, İSTANBUL Turkish aid organizations have launched a joint large-scale aid campaign to provide food and shelter from the cold to Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey to escape from the intensifying violence in their country. Syrian refugees in Turkey, whose number has reached 132,920 according to a written statement recently released by the […]
Test of Turkish society
Over the past 11 years, Turkey has been undergoing an important transformation. While it seems to defend secular and modern-looking Western lifestyles, it is trying to come out of the tangle of Kemalism, which is a regime disregarding democratic values of the West. Even if Kemalism had at first dreamed of establishing a real Western democracy, it was later defiled and turned into a hegemony of the elite.
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