Turkey’s prominent journalist Fehmi Koru answered Ece Uner’s questions on Haberturk TV. He also made comments about the AK Party-Gulen Movement conflict and the probability that the Gulen Movement may engage in active party politics.
Koru said, “What you call as the movement is a civil society organization. They let politicians do the daily politics. They have political opinions and they try to influence politics. But they do this by having relations with politicians as they did in the past. It is against the nature of the movement to impose any opinion on the government. If there is sharp irreconcilable disagreement between the movement and the AK Party, they may found a political party. But if they do so, they will lose the advantage of being a [civil society] movement. They will face more criticism when they found a political party.
HAKAN YAVUZ* In general terms, the Gulen movement reflects a new understanding of Islam and modernity from within an Islam that is informed by Anatolian modern history and secular progress: This is a civil Islam that has successfully found fresh ways to inspire social activism through piety. It has modernized the humanistic treasures of Islam […]
Why is Fethullah Gülen so influential?
In addition to his admirers, Gülen has enemies who have obliged him to live in the United States far away from his beloved country since 1999. It is clear that the animosity towards Gülen stems from Kemalist hard-line secularism, which sees in any manifestation of Islam the worst enemy of modernization and wants to exclude religion from all spheres of society.
Irregularities mark so-called Cabinet decision on Kimse Yok Mu
After the recent controversial Cabinet decision to rescind the Kimse Yok Mu (Is Anybody There) charity organization’s right to collect charitable donations, some irregularity claims have been raised by observers who say this decision was taken arbitrarily with no basis.
AK Party criticizes Hakan Şükür’s sudden resignation
Turkish media claimed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the AK Party, said, “He [Şükür] resigned on an order [from the Hizmet movement], this is not a decision he can make alone.” However, AK Party spokesman Hüseyin Çelik denied the prime minister had made those comments. “I have spoken to the prime minister, everybody should know that he has not made such a statement,” Çelik said.
Abant Platform Proposes Mother Tongue Education
The Journal of Turkish Weekly Thursday, 15 March 2012 The 26th Abant Platform, which brings together high-profile intellectuals, journalists, legal experts and politicians, concluded on Sunday (March 11th) with a recommendation that Turkey’s Constitution recognise the right to education in languages other than Turkish. “Education in one’s mother tongue is an essential human right. The […]
Gulen Movement, civilian governments and the AK Party
The Gulen movement’s understanding of politics and the political process differentiate it from the military and bureaucratic elite. Its main political objective is to transform society by raising the moral consciousness of individuals. By raising moral consciousness, the movement hopes to cleanse the bureaucracy of widespread corruption, increase the efficiency and transparency of state institutions, reinvigorate public work ethic to serve the people in order to enhance the legitimacy of the state, and create opportunity spaces for marginalized sectors of the Anatolian population.
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