Re: Turkey’s selective clampdown on Gulen Community

Since the July 15, 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey, there has obviously been a deliberate attempt to distort the real issues in the country and draw people away from them. Many propagandists have focused on what they see as crackdown on suspected members of the Gulen community, accused of being behind the attempted forceful […]

Since the July 15, 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey, there has obviously been a deliberate attempt to distort the real issues in the country and draw people away from them. Many propagandists have focused on what they see as crackdown on suspected members of the Gulen community, accused of being behind the attempted forceful takeover of government. 

This is what the piece by one Sukru Kucuksahin published in the Daily Trust of November 4, 2016 under the headline ‘Turkey’s selective clampdown on Gulen community’ sought to portray. But people with deep knowledge of what is happening in the country know better. Indeed, it is not for nothing that the attempted coup mobilized the entire nation against not just the putschists, but religious extremists exemplified by most members of the Gulen community.

The Gulen movement led by US-based Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen had become so domineering and notorious that it became a torn on the flesh of leaders of the country. Over the years, through careful manoevring, the Gulenists infiltrated virtually all segments of Turkish national life, the police, military and key bureaucratic institutions in Turkey. They were so effectively in charged that they created what can be regarded as a state within the state. 

Many countries in the world, particularly in Africa and the Middle East are today contending with the devastative consequences of terrorism and other forms of sabotage because of their failure to act when it mattered most. 

The fact is that the ultimate goals of the Gulen movement remain unclear. The movement had been very dogged in its avowed determination to take over Turkey. Before now, the organization which thrives in secrecy used every means possible, libel and coercion to get rid of people opposed to it. Many people were dubbed putschists, arrested and taken out of circulation in the attempt by the movement to gain full authority. Anyone who tried to point out the excesses of the community was seen as an enemy.

In the opening paragraph of Kucuksahin’s piece referred above, he wrote: “As of August 18, about 12,000 people have been jailed pending trial, including prominent businessmen, academics, journalists and soldiers; 10,000 people remain in custody for questioning and 85,000 public servants have been either suspended or dismissed. To make room in the prisons, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government issued a legislative decree last week, paving the way for the release of at least 38,000 prisoners, including convicted thieves.”

Nothing can be further from the truth. A writer and author of ‘Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty’, Mustafa Akyol had recounted his interaction with Gulenists in the US when he was invited to give a lecture. He told the Gulenists in US: “Your people in Turkey did very wrong things of which I don’t approve. To my positive surprise, they responded, “We agree. Turkey’s context made them too fanatical, we are very different here.” 

Akyol then said: “In the next two years, 2012 and 2013, I spoke and signed books at more than a dozen Gulenist events in America. I met people who gave all their lives to a missionary cause, which was, for them, only about showing the beautiful truth of Islam to the world. They were all kind, modest, good-hearted people for whom I only had sympathy. I was convinced, as I still am, that these people – in fact, most Gulenists- had no idea about the dark side of their group.”

Ahmed Yakub Ismail, Abuja.