Muhammet Ali Sezer, the incoming executive director of the Raindrop Turkish Cultural Center, said it will be impossible for him to return to his homeland unless the political situation improves. “If I go back to Turkey, I don’t know what they will do to me,” said Sezer. He also said he fears for his father and brother who live in Turkey.
PakTurk Schools’ Parent-Teacher Association expressed concern that the government may hand over the school management to “a political entity”. The association has demanded of the government not to make an unwise political move, and investigate if there is anything wrong with their curriculum. “Turkey is a friendly country and we respect its democracy. But we should consider the future of 11,000 students of these schools,” the association expresses.
It has been the same topic of discourse everywhere. And it won’t stop anytime soon because of the atrocities that have followed, all in the name of sanitising the country and arresting masterminds of the phantom coup. The news coming out of Turkey has been really disturbing to many, and equally baffling to the world.
The relations between Nigeria and Turkey have been traditionally cordial, and bilateral trade has grown over the years between them. The annual trade volume between Turkey and Nigeria was $1.2 billion by second quarter of 2016, and this consists of clothing, food, engines and automobile parts, as well as pharmaceuticals.
Gulen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, promotes a philosophy that comprises elements of moderate Islam and Sufi mysticism, free-market economics, and interfaith tolerance. That he has a wide following in Turkey (and elsewhere) is not in doubt. As for Erdogan, he can be an Islamist sultan or he can be the democratic leader of a trusted NATO ally. But he can’t be both, and the time has come to make him choose.
In an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya News Channel, Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen said he was confident that the United States will not extradite him. “The United States has a reputation in the world as a country that upholds the rule of law. So I trust they will follow the proper procedures,” Gulen told Al Arabiya’s New York Bureau Chief Talal al-Haj.
Given the popularity of the Hizmet across the world and lack of evidence that Gülen is indeed linked to terrorism, I believe it will be unequivocally impossible to confirm that the movement is a “separatist terrorist organization,” as claimed by the Turkish president. Gülen always makes a broad social critique of violence, terrorism and racism, while promoting social justice, harmony and peace.
Turkey’s request for U.S. extradition of self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen refers only to his alleged activities before last month’s failed coup attempt, for which the Turks have not yet provided any evidence of his involvement, a senior administration official said.
FRANCES SLEAP Dialogue can be hard work. It is an indisputably good idea for there to be meaningful contact between people of different religious, ideological and cultural groups, but to make that happen where it hasn’t yet happened is no mean feat. Between 2010 and 2014 I worked at the Dialogue Society, with people putting […]
On July 26, Turkish police stormed the house of Muhammet Cakir, a lawyer wanted for arrest on coup charges. Failing to find the lawyer at home, they detained his 86-year-old mother to force her son to surrender. She has been kept as hostage since.
It is hard to find a parallel for what has transpired in Turkey since last month’s failed coup without making comparison with the Nuremburg decrees of 1935 that legally ostracized Germany’s Jews and people of Jewish ancestry. Yet Nazi anti-Semitism had a clear and straight-forward rationale, while the popular furor in Turkey over the Hizmet bears the flavor of a personal grudge match between two one-time friends. No ideology. Just down and dirty, no holds barred.
Fethullah Gulen and his movement are being purged not for terrorism, but for being unwilling to mindlessly follow the new elite ISMAIL SEZGIN Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declares that the 15 July coup attempt was orchestrated by the Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Yet, there is little concrete evidence against Gulen. Instead, the government has […]