To cover up the [corruption] investigations, the newspapers close to the government use many derogatory labels for the movement, such as “promoters of light or moderate Islam,” “the protestantization of Islam,” “collaborators and allies of foreign intelligence agencies,” and “Christian missionaries under an Islamic guise.”
An İstanbul-based lawyer filed a criminal complaint on Wednesday against Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, with allegations such as the establishment of a criminal organization, organizing an attempt to overthrow the government, organized fraud and abuse of duty as a civil servant.
The community [the Hizmet movement] is being lynched, and the state is using its power to do it. The same tactic has been used in the claims of mass wiretapping. The prosecutors involved in the investigation have denied the claims, but the black propaganda campaign has been going on for two days.
The fact that the government practically stalled the investigation with a major reshuffle of the judiciary, police, watchdog agencies that track money, and finance and banking activities, while pushing emergency laws through Parliament to prevent further investigations and leaks, casts a shadow on how far the Erdoğan government had gone in these dirty deals.
The High Committee of the Press Council in Turkey, following an appeal by the lawyer of Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, has examined certain articles from the Sabah and Takvim dailies and condemned them for violating its basic principles of journalism.
In an interview with the Zaman daily last week, GYV vice president Cemal Uşak categorically denied the aspersions that have been cast on the Hizmet movement on social media for a couple of years and in conventional media for the last three months that claim that the Hizmet movement has been against the settlement process.
Ruling elites of this country, unfortunately, have targeted different groups at different times. Thus, religious people, Kurds, Alevis, nationalists (ülkücüs), leftists, non-Muslim minorities and democratic intellectuals have been in the bull’s eye for attacks from these elites. The Hizmet movement has always been a member of this list of plagued groups.