WHY PRESIDENT ERDOGAN IS AFTER GULEN

The president wants to cover up systemic corruption in government,

Fethulah Gulen was a reputable ally of President Recep Tayip Erdoan before the 2013 judicial enquiry and investigation into the alleged corrupt practices against the government of Erdogan. There are fundamental reasons why Mr. President is at dagger’s drawn with the self-exiled Islamic scholar Fethulah and sympathisers of the Hizmet movement within the last four years. Firstly, it is the desire of Erdogan to cover up the massive and systemic corruption in government circles. Secondly, is the quest for control over civic leaders and thirdly is the blame game against Gulen for the political instability in Turkey to further justify his despotic rule.

In his first telephone conversation with President Donald Trump of the United States, Turkey’s President Erdogan reportedly brought up the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a retired preacher and Erdogan critic who has lived in the U.S. since 1999.

Erdogan and his proxies have blamed Gulen and his sympathisers for nearly every trouble facing Turkey recently, including the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in December 2016, the downing of a Russian jet by the Turkish air force in November 2016, and a corruption probe in 2013 implicating relatives of his cabinet members. Despite Gulen’s repeated condemnations of any and all heinous acts, he has become Erdogan’s strong political foe.

Turkey has a population of 75 million people, according it the status of one of the most densely populated countries in the World. The numerical strength of a nation is an advantage to its political and economic fortunes.

Erdogan’s intellectual roots lie in the Turkish political Islamist movement called “Milli Gorus” (Nationalist Perspective). Gulen’s “Hizmet” (Service) movement, on the other hand, is rooted in the Sufiinfluenced civil and cultural school of Islam that does not seek political power for a social agenda.

Political Islamists have always had the self-image of the unifying political force of all religiously observant Muslims, and they regarded groups who did not support them politically as traitors. When Erdogan split from his mentor Necmettin Erbakan’s political Islamist party, Erbakan called the new formation traitors. In today’s Turkey, Erdogan is using religious language openly for political gain, using the government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs as a political instrument, and labeling observant Muslim groups who are not aligned with his party as traitors.

The perceived political alignment between the two came from Erdogan’s promise of a pro-European Union (EU), democratic future for Turkey, and Gulen’s principled support for that vision. Gulen met with Erdogan only three times, and all before Erdogan’s party came into power. It’s a myth that Mr. Gulen and Mr. Erdogan were aligned against the secular military. Gulen has never been against a Western, liberal version of secularism or the military as an institution. He historically supported centrist political parties that defended moderate secularism. He has written articles praising the military as an institution providing a vital service to the nation. At the same time, he has consistently been against military coups and the military’s dominating domestic politics, which was also seen by the EU as an obstacle before Turkey’s accession into the union.

Gulen initially supported the democratic reforms promised and partially implemented by Erdogan’s AKP but began to criticise the government after the democratic reforms were stalled and the signs of corruption and authoritarianism increased. In 2005, Gulen-sympathetic news media outlets and civil society organisations strongly opposed a counterterrorism bill that was open to abuse against civilians and journalists not involved in violence. Due to widespread public opposition, the bill was defeated in the parliament. In 2006, Gulen warned Erdogan about the continued government profiling of citizens, unfounded shuffling of civil servants and reversal of democratic reforms.

In 2010, a Turkish government-supported flotilla attempted to break the blockade around Gaza and was raided by Israeli soldiers, resulting in the death of nine Turkish citizens on board. While Erdogan took full political advantage of the incident, Gulen’s approach was more balanced, criticising Erdogan government for taking a confrontational approach in its claim to help the Palestinians when nonconfrontational approaches were available.

Erdogan’s real intentions became clear after his third election victory in June 2011, when he began pushing for a “Turkish-style” executive presidency, which is now close to reality. The proposed system abolishes the office of prime minister, gives the president the power to abolish the parliament, eliminates the parliamentary approval process for his cabinet and does away with parliamentary investigations.

Erdogan began pressuring Gulen to publicly support his executive presidency by repeatedly threatening to shut down Hizmet-affiliated educational institutions in Turkey and all over the World. Gulen refused, having realised that Erdogan was not pursuing reforms to enhance Turkish democracy, but rather to enhance his own power.

In 2013, Gulen-linked media criticised Erdogan’s empowering the intelligence service with operational powers and complete immunity, and Gulen refused to side with Erdogan in the brutal suppression of Gezi Park protestors. An infuriated Erdogan shut down all college admission tutoring centres in the country, about a quarter of which were run by Gulen sympathisers.

A public corruption probe involving members of Erdogan’s cabinet became public in December 2013, including details of a $300,000 watch purchased by Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab for the former economy minister and $4.5 million in cash at the home of the CEO of state-owned Halkbank, the bank that facilitated payments to Iran for oil and gas. Erdogan labeled the probe as a “judiciary coup” against his administration by Gulen sympathisers and their international conspirators. Erdogan started a defamation campaign against Gulen and Hizmet sympathisers, calling them “leeches,” “assassins” and “blood sucking vampires.” The prosecutors were removed from the case, then fired and later arrested.

The new prosecutors assigned to the case summarily closed it. Thousands of members of the judiciary were fired and replaced with pro-Erdogan appointments.

Covering up corruption is Erdogan’s main motivation for obsessively targeting Gulen. The public smear-campaign against Gulen allowed Erdogan to cover up the tracks of an unprecedented and massive corruption case. He used the case as an excuse to transform the Turkish judiciary into an instrument of political persecution.

A new “penal judges of peace” system was established to consolidate arrest warrant decisions in the hands of a small number of judges. The bar for issuing arrest warrants was lowered and, once issued, could not be appealed to a higher court. In October 2014, an association of judges and prosecutors called YBP (Unity in Judiciary Platform), supported by Erdogan, won the majority of seats in elections to the Higher Council of Judges and Prosecutors.

The next target for Erdogan’s drive for total control was the Turkish military. Unlike the judiciary, Turkish military had resisted his efforts for domination – until the coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Erdogan said the coup attempt was “a gift from God” that allowed him to fire thousands of military officers in the aftermath and reengineer the hiring, training, reporting and organisational structure of the military.

Uket wrote from Abuja