Although the AK Party government has been, since a graft probe that rocked the government was made public on Dec. 17 of last year, accusing the Hizmet movement, inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, of infiltrating the police and judiciary and forming a “parallel state” bent on regime change, these new [voice recordings] leaks suggest that the government has been making its own moves to fill the civil service with sympathizers.
Trying to size up the Supreme Court of Appeals, which would have the final say in Doğan’s case, Erdoğan allegedly asks Ergin, “What is the situation after the latest law we passed [on the Supreme Court of Appeals]? Did we set up our own game there?”
“Nearly 2,000 friends who were lawyers practicing in the private sector are being transferred into the system” is Ergin’s alleged response.
Excerpted from the news piece published on Today’s Zaman, 04 March 2014, Tuesday
Future of political islam: lessons from Turkey, Egypt
The eruption of protests across the country in the summer of 2013 were a result of the AKP’s increasingly authoritarian governing style. Rather than reading these protests as a public expression of discomfort — and taking the recent corruption charges seriously before declaring them a conspiracy against the government by the rival Gulen movement — the government is currently pushing legislation within parliament that will not only abolish the separation between the judiciary and the executive but which will completely consolidate the judicial and executive powers at the hands of the government.
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The alleged government-plot against members of the faith-based Hizmet movement, disclosed in June by former Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin, was further instigated with questionable testimonies obtained from secret witnesses, informants and anonymous complainants leading to criminal prosecutions apparently orchestrated by political authorities.
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Responding to widespread assumptions that he ordered his followers in senior positions in the police and judiciary to launch the investigations into alleged high-level government corruption, Gülen issued strong denials of such claims. He said the reactions of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which have included the sacking a number of police commissioners and the arrest of some of Erdoğan’s allies, were “anti-democratic.”
Amnesty: Civil society under massive crackdown in Turkey, Gülen movement main target
An annual report released by Amnesty International on Wednesday has said a failed coup attempt in July prompted a massive crackdown on civil society in Turkey and that the faith-based Gülen movement has been the main target.
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Turkish government seized control of Zaman Newspaper, the largest and highly circulated newspaper in Turkey. The takeover is a violation of the freedom of press which is vital for every democratic state and requires political intervention from the international community.
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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.
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