Monday Talk with Alp Aslandogan on Gulen Movement and Recent Coup Attempt in Turkey

Vocal Europe: What sort of link does Alliance for Shared Values have with the movement in general and with Mr Gulen in particular? Alp Aslandogan:  Alliance for Shared Values (AFSV) has six regional partner organizations and AFSV serves as a loose umbrella for these organizations. They focus on interfaith and intercultural dialogue, helping new immigrants […]

Jailed woman in hospital for delivery to be returned to jail with new-born

Ayse Ates who has been in the jail for 4 months is in the hospital but will be returned to the jail after giving birth, reports Set Them Free, a website devoted to women, children and babies in the jails in Turkey.

Corruption investigation: Questions that will hound PM Erdoğan

Everyone is wondering now what is behind the corruption investigation, and the first “suspect” to come to many minds is the Islamist Gülen movement. Tensions between this group and the AKP have been rising over the years, and boiled over recently due to the prep-school issue – a matter that has received wide media coverage.

The Gülen movement denies this but the vitriol flying between daily Zaman, which is close to Gülen, and Yeni Şafak, which is staunchly pro-AKP, is enough to give one a sense of the bitter struggle involved.

Closing prep schools as a new form of official tyranny

Thanks to the prep school system, with reasonable payments, the children of the “Black Turks” or “Mountain Turks” gain the chance to compete with the children of “White Turks” under equal standards. They, after graduating from good universities, become judges, teachers and academics and act as a catalyst in undermining pathological ways of thinking like labeling people as reactionary.

Parents protest demolition of Fatih College wall

Parents from Merter Fatih College gathered in front of the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality building on Wednesday to protest the demolition the wall of the school as well as a security cabin in the school’s courtyard by municipal teams in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Princeton professor accuses Gulen of orchestrating Turkish coup, Harvard professor disagrees

Edward Owen, professor of Middle East history at Harvard, said that he did not believe in Reynold’s certainty of Gülen’s guilt. Owen added that when a person writes “alarmist pieces” like Reynolds’, the main audience for the pieces is Washington. “It is a way of calling attention to yourself, and I imagine that Professor Reynolds would like his name registered by the people in Washington as somebody to go to, to employ, when there is a change in administration in Washington,” Owen said.