Date posted: October 8, 2016
Nowadays, most articles about Turkey, Erdogan and Gulen have a default sentence: “Erdogan and Gulen were former allies”. It is said and written so many times that eventually became a fact. However, the reality is not that simple.
This 2 minute-video illustrates Gulen-Erdogan history.
Tags: Fethullah Gulen | Hizmet (Gulen) movement | Hizmet and politics | Turkey |

Even before the coup attempt in July, the judiciary was being essentially taken over by [then] PM Tayyip Erdogan. When the attempted coup occurred in July, within 24 hours there were arrest warrants for almost 3,000 judges. And it’s very clear, and in fact it’s been admitted by the deputy chair of the High Council [of Judges and Prosecutors, the body that selects and assigns judges], that that list of judges had existed for years.

The 55-year-old mother of an imprisoned Turkish woman said in a Twitter video that she has been left to look after her grandchildren after the Turkish government imprisoned her daughter as well as her son over alleged links to the Gülen group.

Several Alevi Bektaşi Associations affiliated with the Federation of Alevi Foundations (AVF), which together represent 600 cemevis and 300 local Alevi community associations, have strongly condemned the refusal by Ankara’s Mamak Municipality

Responding to allegations from Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara of being a sympathizer of the faith-based Gülen movement, Bharara said he has just learned Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen’s name from Google and has never been to Turkey.

Questions to challenge the primary and unjustified premise: What judicial (or other) process determined that these corruption investigations were a coup attempt against the government? What proof or evidence do you have to support this most serious claim? What disciplinary process did you undertake to determine that the people that were purged were members and culprits of this ‘coup’? In the absence of evidence and disciplinary process how did you determine these people’s association with Hizmet? When is government corruption not a judicial coup? How can you have the right to unilaterally determine the intent and purpose of these ongoing judicial investigations when your government is implicated in them? If your government can purge over 7,000 police officers (and thereby affect and prevent these investigations) without evidence, due process or disciplinary procedure, do you not set a precedent for every future potentially corrupt government to follow?

An author, lawyer and journalist who made a career and a name for herself from years of working as a court reporter who chased high-profile legal cases has become a victim of Turkish government’s massive crackdown on freedom of press in Turkey.
