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?
Separate sources have suggested that several public institutions prefer pro-government dailies and TV stations over other media, an initiative that follows Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statements about “the opposition that cooperates with an international conspiracy seeking to topple the government.”
It is known that European parliamentarians already talk to people close to Hizmet, so this refusal was interesting. It can even give the impression that the Turkish government is putting pressure on the EP. Of course, Turkey hasn’t that kind of power; if we did, we would have become an EU member years ago. The other impression is that the Hizmet movement is trying to influence the EP’s work.
The claim was also denied by the person in charge of the camp, Ibrahim Abdinur Muhammed, demonstrating that defamatory activities are being conducted by pro-government media outlets against Hizmet movement.
Muhammed said the organization had helped 450 families living in the camp and that it continues to send assistance to the camps in six other locations in Somali in the form of health and food supplies and clothing as well as education tools.
The Movement fights against ignorance all around the world, reaches and brings service to people who are forgotten by the governments with their volunteers, and helps enrich their morality with Islam and material worlds with their modern institutions and instruments.
In an interview with the Cihan news agency, Durak showed reaction to Erdoğan’s order to the ambassadors and he visited some of the Turkish schools in foreign countries. “Children of prime ministers and presidents and high-level bureaucrats are sent to these schools opened in Africa and many parts of the world… Many significant people are given education in these schools. I am of the opinion denouncing these schools to the ambassadors instead of supporting them is equal to treason,” said Durak.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made their remarks in response to a question at a joint news conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gül following a trilateral summit in Ankara that focused on security.
“Afghan children are offered high-quality education services. We are very happy about that,” Karzai said, while Sharif said the schools “are doing a perfect job.”
Ahmet Dönmez, a leading correspondent based in Ankara with the Zaman daily who was sharply rebuked by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after asking him a question about recent allegations of corruption during a press conference on Feb. 12 and who was proclaimed both a national hero and a traitor on social media outlets shortly thereafter, says that he was also reproached by Erdoğan once before and that this is indicative of the state of journalism in Turkey.
“We consider the dissemination … of wiretaps of Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi’s conversations an operation, and we condemn and refuse to accept these kinds of activities,” Yıldırım said. Gülen filed criminal complaints over the illegal wiretaps and against the media outlets and websites that published the distorted voice recordings in an attempt to defame the scholar.
Housed inside the building of APCO Worldwide, an independent communications consultancy firm, the art exhibition consists of 19 photographs taken by volunteers who participated in Kimse Yok Mu initiatives around the world, including in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Sudan. The exhibition will be open until Feb. 16.
Speaking at the conference, GYV Secretary-General Hüseyin Hurmalı said that the GYV has been working voluntarily both in the US and across the globe to establish peace and dialogue. “We have tried to eliminate prejudices and wrong ideas about Turkey, we know that it is important for Turkey to enter into a process of peace and development,” Hurmalı added.
President Abdullah Gül has underlined the importance of domestic peace for Turkey to keep up its development, noting that the country should not waste its energy by focusing on “unnecessary rumors,” an almost open reference to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s defamation campaign targeting the Hizmet movement, a volunteer-based grassroots movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.