Date posted: October 8, 2016
Nowadays, most articles about Turkey, Erdogan and Gulen have a default sentence: “Erdogan and Gulen were former allies”. It is said and written so many times that eventually became a fact. However, the reality is not that simple.
This 2 minute-video illustrates Gulen-Erdogan history.
Tags: Fethullah Gulen | Hizmet (Gulen) movement | Hizmet and politics | Turkey |

What appears to be going on in Turkey now is a struggle between the Hizmet movement and Erdogan. However, when you scratch the surface, it is easy to detect the increasing authoritarian and arbitrary rule under Erdogan’s government. All Gulen is doing is asking for a more democratic Turkey.

.In the wake of the Dec. 17 corruption operations that took place in Turkey, the government removed and changed such an extraordinarily high number of people from their positions in the police force, the justice system and the national education structure that these changes certainly would not have been possible in a state of law. An attempt was made to see these changes happen within the framework of heavy propaganda about the concept of the existence of a “parallel state.”

ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ 18 May 2012 If we were to give a title to an article discussing the problems most heatedly debated in Turkey, I think the best option would be “Woes of transitioning from an empire to a nation-state.” It has been no easy task to transform a multi-faith, multi-lingual and diversity-dominated empire into a […]

The president has branded the annual contest of foreign students on the Turkish language the “greatest service” to Turkey, Turkish culture and its language, as he met with contestants participating in this year’s Olympiads. President Abdullah Gül told reporters while meeting with participants of the 11th Turkish Olympiads in the Çankaya presidential palace that organizations […]

Questions to challenge the primary and unjustified premise: What judicial (or other) process determined that these corruption investigations were a coup attempt against the government? What proof or evidence do you have to support this most serious claim? What disciplinary process did you undertake to determine that the people that were purged were members and culprits of this ‘coup’? In the absence of evidence and disciplinary process how did you determine these people’s association with Hizmet? When is government corruption not a judicial coup? How can you have the right to unilaterally determine the intent and purpose of these ongoing judicial investigations when your government is implicated in them? If your government can purge over 7,000 police officers (and thereby affect and prevent these investigations) without evidence, due process or disciplinary procedure, do you not set a precedent for every future potentially corrupt government to follow?

Publishing a book in 2009 about Francis of Assisi’s peaceful encounter with Egypt’s Sultan Malik al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade led me to meet a lot of people with an interest in improving interreligious relations. Among them were a number of Turkish immigrants who are followers of the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. I observed that through a network of private schools, foundations and media organizations, they have worked very hard to improve Muslim-Christian relations.
