
Until recently Turkey was seen as an example of a country that prospered while maintaining a democratic government run by observant Muslim leaders. No longer. A small group within the government’s executive branch is holding to ransom the entire country’s progress. The support of a broad segment of the Turkish public is now being squandered, along with the opportunity to join the EU.

Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament, also accused the prime minister, whom he said was “clearly elected democratically,” of not ruling democratically. Duff said the aggravated language that exposes serious rifts between the AK Party and the Gülen movement risks destabilizing Turkey.

The Hizmet movement is Turkey’s strongest civil Islamic movement, and it can employ social dynamics to resist the AK Party. The race for the local polls slated for March 30 is between the AK Party and the Hizmet movement, not between the AK Party and other political parties.

Dismayed, if not surprised, by the unabated smear campaign against distinguished Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, the scholar’s relatives have expressed their disappointment and anxiety over the endless accusations and slander against Gülen.

To prove whether the Gülen movement has a parallel structure , one has to establish that the investigations and wiretappings were not conducted within the scope of a legal investigation. If that is proven, one has to demonstrate that the police and prosecutors in charge of the investigations were receiving instructions not from the state but from sources within the movement. Both of these claims have to be proven with evidence.

Nobody believes that the mass culling and reassignment of up to 10,000 public officials (most from the police department and the judiciary and many of whom are mid-level and senior personnel) so far by embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has anything to do with what the government purports is a fight against a “parallel structure,” a veiled reference to members of the Hizmet movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.

Arguments and discriminatory rhetoric used by the prime minister against the Hizmet movement spoil the emotional well-being of our people; undermine social peace and prepare the groundwork for violence by sowing the seeds of hatred in society, the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) said in a forceful statement .

Prime Minister marketed the historic graft investigation as a “coup against the government” and he targeted the Hizmet movement by voicing this claim first in the pro-government media outlets and then in the election rallies along with a host of unthinkable lies and slanders.