Turkey’s Crackdown Extends to Taipei

Participants of the Formosa Institute’s international conference on the Hizmet movement are shown at National Taiwan University in Taipei. Photo credit: The China Post)
Participants of the Formosa Institute’s international conference on the Hizmet movement are shown at National Taiwan University in Taipei. Photo credit: The China Post)


Date posted: August 4, 2016

Edward White

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime, which has blamed the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen for last month’s failed coup attempt, has purged tens of thousands of people linked to the “Gulenist” movement – the Turkish government now calls the group the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization, or FETO.

Who exactly is being targeted? As former CIA official Graham E. Fuller, wrote in The Huffington Post, Gulen operates a civil movement called “Hizmet,” which translates to “Service,” and probably has more than one million followers or sympathizers who are not under centralized control.

The group’s exact scope and ambit is difficult to define; people and organizations who say they are “Gulen-inspired” operate around world, often focusing on cross-cultural, business and education ties with Turkey.

As of late July, the number of people thought to be affected by the crackdown in Turkey totaled almost 60,000 – including 21,000 teachers whose licenses were revoked, 8,000 police removed from their posts, more than 250 staff from the prime minister’s office, as well as judges and soldiers, according to the BBC.

Around the world, Turkish diplomats have relayed Erdogan’s line – that plotters in the military linked to FETO tried to “overthrow the democratically-elected government and the constitutional order in Turkey.”

In Taipei, the “Gulen-inspired” Formosa Institute is feeling Erdogan’s reach.

Burhan Cikili is an academic and vice-chair of the institute. The organization, which has a plush office on the 21st floor of a central Taipei office building, is something of a local think-tank linking Taiwan and Turkey. It holds conferences, seminars and lectures, and collaborates with local universities and institutions. It says it is mainly funded by local Taiwanese and Turkish businesspeople.

Cikili told The News Lens International he is confident Taiwanese understand the line being pushed by Turkish officials – including the representatives in Taiwan who are understood to have told local media about the Formosa Institute’s Gulen ties – is “slander.”

In response to questions about the institute being now linked to an official – in Turkey at least – terrorist organization, Cikili points to the numerous lectures and presentations the organization has held on the issue of Islamic terrorism in recent years. And he says most of the people prominently associated with the group are Taiwanese, and none have asked to have their names formally removed from any public material linking them to the institute since the July 15 coup.

However, financially, and in political capital terms, the organization is taking a hit.

Previously the institute and the Turkish office in Taipei had a solid working relationship. Cikili says financial and practical support for the institute has declined amid pressure from Turkish officials in Taiwan, a trend that started after the alliance between Erdogan and Gulen broke down in 2013. This likely reflects the fact that some supporters are toeing the official Turkish line for business reasons.

Cikili says the latest coup attempt in Turkey will only worsen the institute’s financial situation.

“We, of course, will feel the impact,” he says.

While he is defensive of Gulen – the person and the movement – and keen to push the narrative that Erdogan may have had a hand in the coup himself, Cikili for the most part appears despondent about Turkey’s bleak outlook. He notes that it was only recently Turkey’s economy was developing rapidly – in 2011 it was the second fastest after China among major emerging market economies.

“After this coup attempt I am not sure if we will have another election or not,” he says.

He is personally not afraid to return to Turkey, but is worried about his friends and family at home. There are hundreds of Gulenist schools across Turkey, and Gulenist media is widely circulated, which puts huge numbers of Turkish people at risk of being labelled as part of a terrorist group.

For Taiwan in particular, Cikili says it is “very sad” to see the tourism ties, which had been strong between the two countries, come to a halt as most countries warn citizens not to travel to Turkey.

Source: The News Lens , August 4, 2016


Related News

Reflections on my first trip to TÜRKIYE

Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying a group of Jewish community leaders on a Niagara Foundation sponsored trip to Türkiye (Turkey). Our mission: to provide the group with windows into the Jewish experience in Turkey. One of the trip participants would describe this as, “not a Jewish trip to Turkey but a group of Jewish people traveling to Turkey.”

Turkish Kimse Yok Mu volunteers staying months to help survivors

The members of Kimse Yok Mu Foundation were the first group among dozens of international humanitarian groups that have descended to Tacloban City, of Philippines, which bore the brunt of the world’s strongest typhoon recorded this year. Kimse Yok Mu Foundation was able to collect $2 million and was still receiving donations for Haiyan victims, said Kurkcu. The foundation was organized in 1999, just months after Turkey was hit by a devastating earthquake that killed more than 17,000 people.

Turkish NGO Kimse Yok Mu handed over 296 houses for flood affectees

Staff Reporter / Lahore A protocol was signed between Punjab government and an international NGO of Turkey, Kimse Yok Mu, at Model Town, here today under which Turkish NGO has handed over a modern village consisting of 296 houses for flood affectees at moza Rakh Khanpur district Muzaffargarh, to Provincial Disaster Management Authority. Punjab government had […]

Fethullah Gulen: I Condemn All Threats to Turkey’s Democracy

I have been advocating for democracy for decades. Having suffered through four military coups in four decades in Turkey — and having been subjected by those military regimes to harassment and wrongful imprisonment — I would never want my fellow citizens to endure such an ordeal again. If somebody who appears to be a Hizmet sympathizer has been involved in an attempted coup, he betrays my ideals.

40,000 people reported to authorities for being Gülen followers since July 15

As many as 40,000 people have been reported to the Ankara Police Department for being followers of the Gülen movement since a failed coup attempt on July 15. Although the movement strongly denies having any role in the corruption probe and the coup attempt, the government accuses it of having masterminded both despite the lack of any tangible evidence.

The term ‘Fetö’ is a misnomer, a bizarre creation of the paranoid Erdoğan propaganda machine

It disturbed me to see your newspaper uncritically using the term ‘Fetö’ – standing for the so-called ‘Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organisation’, which is a rather bizarre creation of the paranoid Erdoğan propaganda machine. It is true that, with most dissenting voices silenced and most of the opposition press closed, Erdoğan’s propaganda now reigns supreme in Turkey.

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

Samanyolu TV celebrates its 20th year

Another woman faces detention just after giving birth as police await at hospital

Top Three Reasons Why Turkey’s President Erdogan is Obsessed with Gulen

Government allegedly plots to blame Bingöl attacks on Hizmet movement

Turkish schools dominate award ceremony in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Victims of Erdogan’s witch-hunt and purge get their voice heard

Erdogan vows for genocide of Gulen sympathizers: “We will not give them the right to life!”

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News