Efforts in Canada by Turkish authorities and supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have made life miserable for Gulen followers here, many say. They have been made unwelcome in mosques and restaurants frequented by Turkish-Canadians, and they have been cursed and protested against by fellow citizens.
The government-run Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) has taken over more than 200 companies as part of investigations into the Gülen movement in the recent past. Akın İpek, the CEO of Koza İpek Holding until the confiscation, said 18 of the group’s confiscated companies alone worth over $10 billion.
Asked if he was suggesting that Erdogan was behind the coup, Gulen said: “Until now I only thought that was a possibility. Now I think it’s certain.” Gulen said a Turkish officer had recently said that the chief of general staff and the intelligence chief met in the army headquarters during the night of the coup, adding: “They already knew everything that would happen later.”
Another woman, a former Turkish journalist before the government shut down papers that spoke out against it, said: “I feel like my voice has been taken. People don’t feel safe in London, even going shopping, because we don’t know what radicals will do.”
At separate meetings between President Obama, US Vice president Biden and President Erdogan of Turkey, the American justice system has technically made it very difficult and imposable for the unlawful demands of Erdogan to be met. However, the options available to Erdogan are number one, to propose and sponsor amendments at the US parliament, number two, is to provide evidences to his claims against Gulen.
“I looked for a lawyer for days, but I failed. None of the lawyers agreed to defend my husband. The bar association will assign a lawyer. I feel so helpless. My husband is being tortured. I fear for his life and mental health. Please help me!”
The vastness and persistence of the purge of the civil service, arrests of journalists, and closure of media outlets—many seemingly having nothing whatsoever to do with the exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen or his Gülenist movement that the Turkish government blames for the coup attempt.
The government is yet to renovate that place, preserving the area for foreign delegations as a showcase for the savagery of putschist soldiers. Ankara makes sure that every visiting foreign official is making their pilgrimage to the site, through dust and scattered rocks, so that they see firsthand how the mutineering soldiers attacked the Turkish democracy.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999, told the German broadcaster ZDF in an interview broadcast on Friday that there was no evidence linking him to the thwarted putsch, which he has denounced. He accused Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan of using the coup to silence opponents.
Calling for an international probe into the accusation, Gulen told ZDF that he would be ready to answer to such an investigation. “If their accusations stand, then I will accept what they want. But they have neither succeeded in showing any concrete proof nor given an answer to my suggestion. Therefore, these are all just mere assertions,” he said.
Turkish President Erdogan on Tuesday called on world leaders to fight against US based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen over what he (Erdogan) described as an act of terrorism orchestrated by Gulen against Turkey. Addressing Presidents and Prime Ministers of civilised regimes of the world at the 68th UN General Assembly, Erdogan demonstrated before his colleagues very high level of incapacitation and inability to stick to simple ratified conventions to which Turkey is signatory.
That is down in large part to the gutting of Turkey’s independent press. More than 115 journalists have been imprisoned and hundreds more fired since the July 15th coup attempt, while 130 media outlets have been shuttered. That, in addition to the sacking of more than 1,000 media workers in the previous 12 months, has left crucial questions unanswered. Put simply, there is no one left – or willing – to overturn the stones on which the failed military takeover was built.
The past couple of months have been tumultuous in Turkey. In short order, an ill-conceived military coup was followed by popular mass protest, the quick return of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power, and a wave of repression ranging from military and judicial purges, to state restrictions on a panoply of basic human rights protections, to allegations of “widespread human rights abuses” by state actors.