Date posted: April 2, 2017
A report published by The Black Sea news website on Saturday revealed that imams from Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) spied on people sympathetic to Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement he inspired in Romania as well.
According to the report, following a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, a memo from Turkey’s counselor for religious affairs in Bucharest, Osman Kilic, was sent to the Diyanet in Ankara on Sept. 27, 2016.
This document includes a list of 11 schools, kindergartens and one university that are part of the Lumina Educational Institutions, which have been active in Romania since 1994.
“The Turkish Embassy in Bucharest has told us it ‘does not have any information’ about this correspondence. But documents from the same cache, seen by the European Investigative Collaborations Network, have been confirmed by other Turkish diplomatic missions,” said the report.
“There are tough allegations that the Turkish Embassy is blocking the release of vital documents to Turkish citizens and cancelling their passports — forcing them to stay in Romania, and ‘blackmailing’ parents into pulling their children from Gulenist schools,” added the report.
Turkey’s worldwide monitoring
A report published by German Der Spiegel magazine on Friday revealed details of Turkey’s spying activities on people linked with the Gülen movement around the world.
Evaluating diplomatic cables containing information collected by Turkish diplomatic missions in 35 countries, Der Spiegel wrote: “Turkish embassies in Nigeria, Australia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia have all reported on the schools in those countries they believe to be affiliated with the Gülen movement. They document the organizations in which Gülen supporters are active and the media they write for. They also outline the relationships of the alleged supporters to each country’s government.”
Source: Turkish Minute , April 2, 2017
Tags: Europe | Persecution of Hizmet by Erdogan | Romania | Turkey |
In rhetoric reminiscent of the Stalinist purges, Erdoğan promised to “cleanse all state institutions”, rid Turkey’s judiciary of “cancer cells” and purge state bodies of the “virus”that has spread throughout Turkish state structures.
The Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) — whose honorary chairman is Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen — has stated that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been trying to create the perception that the Hizmet movement is being backed by the US with his recent request for Gülen’s extradition though there is no legal basis for one.
Turkey is no longer the old Turkey. The affluent middle class, the young population and stronger civil society organizations, strengthened by the digital revolution with such tools as social media and Internet portals, will resist any attempts to turn the clock backwards on the development of Turkish democracy. People will simply ask why Prime Minister Erdoğan is not going after his people who have been sleeping with the enemy next door if he is really sincere in addressing external threats to this great nation.
The Justice Ministry has rejected a request from a coalition of international journalist organizations to visit imprisoned Turkish journalist Hidayet Karaca at Silivri Prison in İstanbul.
Adalet Binici, a 14-year-old Kurdish girl in eighth grade, became the champion in last year’s Level Determination Examination (SBS), a high school placement test administered by the Turkish government to over a million students nationwide, thanks to the supplementary education and training provided by a prep school run by the Hizmet movement that is inspired by education-savvy Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Gülen is highly respected both in Turkey and in many countries around the world for educational activities he has pioneered, along with his efforts to promote intercultural and interfaith activities around the globe. He is in self-imposed exile in the US, though there is no legal hurdle that prevents him from returning to Turkey.