Date posted: July 20, 2016
This is how Fethullah Gulen has responded to ‘the coup’ accusations.
Tags: Defamation of Hizmet | Fethullah Gulen | Military coups in Turkey | Turkey |

The Turkish authorities’ fight against real and imagined enemies in the Gülen movement has now reached Azerbaijan and Georgia.

In Turkey, the increasing pressure over the freedom of press, property rights and authoritarianism have reached an alarming level. A recent report on the rule of law and respect for human rights inTurkey declared that Turkish government had been perpetrating systematic human rights violations since December 2013.

As far as the Kurds living in other countries are concerned, as Fethullah Gülen underscored in his Rudaw newspaper interview, Turkey should not only be interested in the well-being of Turks’ ethnic brothers in other countries but also Kurds’ and other ethnically non-Turkish citizens’ brothers and relatives all over the world. Thus, instead of seeing an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria as a threat, we must be happy that our Kurdish relatives on the other side of the border will hopefully have better living standards and human rights.

South Africa is a good example of a country that has not been pressured into adopting the narrative touted by the Turkish government. Local politicians, students and academics regularly acknowledge the Hizmet Movement’s altruistic activities in the country.

ALİ ASLAN KILIÇ, ANKARA In Muş, where I was during the final days of August for the anniversary of the Battle of Manzigert, I had the chance to speak with citizens from both Manzigert and Ağrı about the terror problem and the solution process aimed at Turkish-Kurdish peace. Last Sunday, I was in the neighborhood […]

We can reasonably hope that there won’t be any large-scale bloody purges, Stalin-style. But Turkey is likely to grow further away from Europe. The convenient travel visas to the rest of Europe, which many Turks have hoped for, may be a long time away.
