US House Intel Chair Says ‘Hard To Believe’ Gulen Behind Turkey Coup
Date posted: March 20, 2017
The United State House Intelligence Committee chairman has said it is “hard to believe” that U.S.-based Turkish cleric is behind the military coup attempt last summer, questioning Turkey as a reliable ally.
“I find that hard to believe,” Devin Nunes told Chris Wallace from Fox News when asked if cleric Fethullah Gulen is the architect of the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Mr. Nunes added that the government of Mr. Erdogan is becoming very authoritarian and that Ankara, as a NATO ally, is “becoming more and more worrisome in terms of actually being a reliable ally.”
Mr. Nunes noted that he has not seen the evidence that Mr. Gulen was involved in the coup attempt and that he does not know if the U.S. is going to extradite “somebody like that.”
He added that if there was an evidence linking Mr. Gulen to the coup attempt in Turkey, that would be “a different issue.”
The GOP intel chairman reminded that relations between the U.S. and Turkey are strained and it is becoming even more complicated as “we try to get ISIS out of Iraq and Syria.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has returned to his agenda of political Islamism since the 2011 elections even though he had rejected it in the past, and he quickly set out to implement his plan to purge the Hizmet movement, a plan he had made long ago.
Erdogan’s options: to propose and sponsor amendments at the US parliament or to provide evidence against Gulen
At separate meetings between President Obama, US Vice president Biden and President Erdogan of Turkey, the American justice system has technically made it very difficult and imposable for the unlawful demands of Erdogan to be met. However, the options available to Erdogan are number one, to propose and sponsor amendments at the US parliament, number two, is to provide evidences to his claims against Gulen.
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We appreciated the beauty of spring better than ever and this was one of those time “when beauty whispers to the heart.” It was the motto of a very meaningful interfaith conference organized by Peace Island Institute in Connecticut, Sacred Heart University and Fountain Magazine. Our distinguished speakers discussed the concept and expression of “Beauty” in Abrahamic traditions from two perspectives: nature and art.
German Politician: Turkey like Nazi Germany after Reichstag
FDP leader Christian Lindner said he saw parallels between Erdogan’s behavior and the aftermath of the Reichstag fire in 1933 portrayed by the Nazis as a Communist plot against the government and used by Adolf Hitler to justify massively curtailing civil liberties. “We are experiencing a coup d’etat from above like in 1933 after the Reichstag fire. He is building an authoritarian regime tailored solely to himself,” Lindner said.
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Turkey’s Islamic camp is more diverse than one would think. In fact, the traditions that Erdoğan and Gülen come from have almost always been distinct and different from each. The former has been more explicitly Islamist, at times anti-Western and anti-Semitic. The latter, the line of Gülen, which goes back to scholar Said Nursi (1878-1960), has rather stayed closer to center-right parties and have been more friendly to the West and also other “Abrahamic” faiths.
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