Fethullah Gulen’s “old friend” detained by İzmir police despite suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease
Date posted: January 23, 2020
An 81-year-old Turkish man, who is known as a “longtime friend of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, was detained by police in the Turkish province of İzmir on Monday due to his links to the Gülen group.
According to the Gulen-friendly tr724 news website, Yusuf Pekmezci, who suffers from advenced Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure and osteoporosis, was in hiding for three years.
He is currenlty being held in police custody.
Pekmezci came to public attention with a 2014 interview he gave in which he talked about his love for the movement and Fethullah Gülen.
In a BBC interview aired in late February, Fethullah Gülen once again spelled out the most important challenges for Turkey: establishing unity among diverse groups that include Alevis, Kurds and others; boosting educational opportunities for the young population; and tackling the long-running poverty problem in Turkey.
WaPo publishes editorial from Fethullah Gulen on the day Erdogan meets Trump
If nothing else, the timing of this is certainly interesting. Yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Washington for his meeting with President Trump scheduled for later today. It’s an encounter which I already described as problematic at best, given Erdogan’s new status as a strongman and tyrant, and it doesn’t seem to hold the promise of much benefit on our part.
‘Humiliating people not allowed in Islam’
A man identified as Mustafa Petek asked the Religious Affairs Directorate on March 24 if Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the Hizmet movement, deserves to be a target of hate speech by state officials. The Religious Affairs Directorate, in response to the man’s query on hate speech, said, “In Islam, no one is allowed to humiliate a person or refer to him using adjectives that don’t represent him.”
Turkish gov’t pays cash rewards for arrest or death of Gülen supporters
Turkey’s Interior Ministry has paid more than 19 million Turkish lira to 249 people who provided information leading to the arrest or were instrumental in the death of supporters of the faith-based Gülen movement, a pro-government newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Watch your mouth
One Turkish folk song says: “Chests are piled up on each other / Woe to us, o gallant people / We have made a promise without thinking / We held you in high esteem although you did not deserve it.”
Erdoğan’s scapegoats: the West and Gülen
Erdogan can even push for a ridiculous extradition application to be made to the US, and when this is refused, he will use this in his public rallies as evidence to show that the US is working with Gülen to topple his government. As I said, he is not bound by ethics and knows very well that corruption is a fact in Turkey but prefers to present himself as the victim.
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