Albanian Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri has said his country’s relevant authorities gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the necessary responses to his recent request for the closure of Turkish schools in the country.
Albania’s Parliament Speaker Ilir Meta visited a Turkish school in the capital tirana on Friday to send a message to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called for the closure of Turkish schools in Albania during his visit last week, stirring debate among Albanian politicians and journalists, an Albanian daily wrote on Sunday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call for the closure of Turkish schools in Albania unleashed a swirl of debate in the Albanian political and media landscape, leading to intensified pressure on the government to clarify its position and Education Minister Lindita Nikolla saying that the government has already shut down a number of schools regarded as unfit according to criteria set in a recent education reform.
Democratic Left Party (DSP) Chairman Masum Türker has said that controversial decisions made by the National Security Council (MGK) to curb the activities of the Gülen movement were ignored by former Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit in 2000 but signed by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Aug. 25, 2004.
Police teams entered and searched the premises of the Malatya Active Businessmen’s Association (MAKİAD) on Thursday in a new wave of government-led operations targeting institutions deemed to have an affiliation with the Gülen movement — a faith-based initiative inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Erdoğan’s harsh attacks on the Hizmet movement, consisting of followers and sympathizers of Fethullah Gülen, reached a summit when he stated on Tuesday, “from A to Z everyone in this organization needs to pay the price. Either they will accept the presence of this state or they will disappear.”
İlhan İşbilen, an independent deputy for İzmir, has said some sections of society are part of a “dirty scenario” that aims to make sure the Gülen movement, a faith-based grassroots social initiative, is uttered in the same breath as extrajudicial political killings.
My first response to this question is to question whether or not we are really obliged to use the concept of civil disobedience, one created by the West, when we are talking about the Muslim world, which is after all so very different. Does analyzing a civil and social movement which receives the support of so many factions of society…