Fethullah G?len's Grand Ambition Part I I I

 

Turkey's Islamist Danger

by Rachel Sharon-Krespin

3^rd  part of 3

The Fifth Estate

If the police, military, and courts might normally protect rule-of-law from within official Turkish government structures, there might still be an external check to abuse of power in the Turkish media. The Turkish media has traditionally been relentless in its reporting of abuses of power and corruption. Soon after assuming office, however, Erdoğan proved intolerant of the concept of a free press. The AKP government has systematically sought to create a media monopoly to speak with one voice and on behalf of the government. Erdoğan lashes out at media organs that he does not control. In his first term, Erdoğan brought more than a hundred lawsuits against sixty-three journalists in sixteen publications, against many writers, as well as the leaders and members of parliament of all opposition parties. The number of lawsuits may be far greater. In 2008, Erdoğan declined to answer a parliamentary inquiry by a Democratic Left Party deputy demanding information on how many lawsuits Erdoğan had initiated against journalists—claiming that such information was in the realm of his private life."[42] Most of Erdoğan's lawsuits against journalists involve criticism that any other democracy would consider legitimate. In 2005, for example, he sued Cumhuriyet cartoonist Musa Kart for depicting him as a cat entangled in a ball of string. Last year, he sued the LeMan weekly humor magazine for ridiculing him in its January 30, 2008 cover.[43]

Erdoğan lost some of his lawsuits, and courts threw out others, but the effect has nonetheless been chilling. Journalists know that not only does the prime minister seek to make them financially liable for any criticism, but that the AKP might even seek to assume control of their publications. During AKP's 6-year rule, the government has seized control of several media outlets and subsequently sold them to pro-AKP holdings affiliated with the Gülen community. In April 2007, for example, the governmental Saving Deposit Insurance Fund (Tasarruf Mevduatı Sigorta Fonu, TMSF) seized Sabah-ATV, Turkey's second largest media group in a predawn raid. The TMSF, staffed by Erdoğan appointees, then sold the group to Çalık Holding, the CEO of which is Erdoğan's son-in-law. Çalık financed the purchase with public funds taken as loans from two state-owned banks and by partnering with a newly-founded, Qatar-based media company that bought 25 percent of Sabah shares. It was Abdullah Gül who introduced Ahmet Çalık to Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa during his January 2008 visit in Syria; Çalık also accompanied Gül in February and Erdoğan in April when they visited Qatar. Media reports indicated that other consortiums that had initially shown interest in purchasing Sabah-ATV with their own money pulled out of the tender shortly before the bid after Erdoğan contacted them, leaving Çalik the sole bidder.[44] Sabah has since become a strong advocate of the AKP government. In September 2008, Erdoğan demanded all party members and aides boycott newspapers owned by the Doğan Media Group after it reported on laundering of money to Islamist charities.[45]

Excluding the Islamist television and radio stations, newspapers such as Zaman, Sabah, Yeni Şafak, Türkiye, Star, Bugün, Vakit, and Taraf all have AKP and/or Gülen-affiliated ownership. By circulation, such papers represent at least 40 percent of all newspaper sales in Turkey.[46]

What Are Gülen's Intentions?

Conglomerates have long had a dominant position in Turkish society. Secular businessmen such as Aydın Doğan and Mehmet Emin Karamehmet have interests not only in industry but also in media, the banking sector, and even education. Never before, though, has a single individual started a movement that seeks to transform Turkish society so fundamentally. Gülen now wields a vocal partisan media; a vast network of loyal bureaucrats; partisan universities and academia; partisan prosecutors and judges; partisan security and intelligence agencies; partisan capitalists, business associations, NGOs, and labor unions; and partisan teachers, doctors, and hospitals. What makes Gülen so dangerous? Gülen's own teaching and sermons provide the best answers.

In 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by Shari'a (Islamic law) as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

He continued,

When everything was closed and all doors were locked, our houses of isik [light] assumed a mission greater than that of older times. In the past, some of the duties of these houses were carried out by madrasas [Islamic schools], some by schools, some by tekkes [Islamist lodges] … These isik homes had to be the schools, had to be madrasas, [had to be] tekkes all at the same time. The permission did not come from the state, or the state's laws, or the people who govern us. The permission was given by God … who wanted His name learned and talked about, studied, and discussed in those houses, as it used to be in the mosques.[47]

In another sermon, Gülen said,

Now it is a painful spring that we live in. A nation is being born again. A nation of millions [is] being born—one that will live for long centuries, God willing … It is being born with its own culture, its own civilization. If giving birth to one person is so painful, the birth of millions cannot be pain-free. Naturally we will suffer pain. It won't be easy for a nation that has accepted atheism, has accepted materialism, a nation accustomed to running away from itself, to come back riding on its horse. It will not be easy, but it is worth all our suffering and the sacrifices.[48]

And, in yet another sermon, he declared,

The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life.[49]

Many Gülen supporters and members of the Islamist media affiliated with the cemaat suggested the sermons were somehow forged[50] but the denials are unconvincing given the video footage and reports by Gülen movement defectors.

 

U.S. Government Support for Gülen?

Many Turkish analysts believe that, prior to Erdoğan's election, Gülen and his supporters in the U.S. government helped obtain an invitation to the White House for him at a time when Erdoğan was banned from politics in Turkey due to his Islamist activities—an event viewed as a U.S. endorsement ahead of the 2002 Turkish elections. That the U.S. government and, specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency support the Gülen movement is conventional wisdom among Turkey's secular elite even though no hard evidence exists to support such allegations.

When Turkish secularists are asked to defend the view that Gülen enjoys U.S. support, they often point to his almost 20-year residence in eastern Pennsylvania. After the Supreme Court of Appeals in Turkey (Yargıtay) confirmed on June 24, 2008, a lower court's ruling to acquit Gülen on charges that he organized an illegal terrorist organization to overthrow the secular government in Turkey, Gülen won another legal battle, this time in the United States. A federal court reversed U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service decisions that would have denied Gülen's application for permanent residency in the United States on the basis that Gülen did not fit the criteria as someone with "extraordinary ability in the field of education." The Department of Homeland Security characterized Gülen as neither an expert in the field of education nor an educator but rather as "the leader of a large and influential religious and political movement with immense commercial holdings."[51]

While the court ruling that allowed Gülen to remain in the United States may provide fodder for Turkish analysts who suggest U.S. support for Gülen, the process is actually more revealing. Indeed, the U.S. government noted that much of the acclaim Gülen touts is sponsored or financed by his own movement. Gülen attached twenty-nine letters of reference to his June 18, 2008 motion, mostly from theologians or Turkish political figures close to or affiliated with his organization. John Esposito, founding director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, who, after receiving donations from the Gülen movement sponsored a conference in his honor, also supplied a reference. Two former CIA officials, George Fidas and Graham Fuller, and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz also supplied references.

The letters may have worked. On July 16, 2008, U.S. district judge Stewart Dalzell issued a memorandum and order granting Gülen's motion for partial summary judgment and ordering the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to approve his petition for alien worker status as an alien of extraordinary ability by August 1, 2008. The court found that the immigration examiner improperly concluded that the field of education was the only statutory category in which Gülen's accomplishments could fit and that Gülen's accomplishments in such fields as theology, political science, and Islamic studies should also be considered. The court further determined that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Administrative Appeals Office erred in concluding that Gülen's work was not "scholarly" by applying an unduly narrow definition of the term. Finally, with regard to the statutory requirement that the applicant show that his or her entry into the United States would substantially benefit the United States, the court found that Gülen had met the requirement.[52]

Regardless of the legal rationale behind his current stay, the U.S. decision to grant Gülen residency will enable his movement to continue to imply Washington's endorsement as the AKP and its Fethullahist supporters seek to push Turkey further away from the secularism upon which it was built.

Conclusions

Gülen enjoys the support of many friends, ideological fellow-travelers, and co-opted journalists and academics. Too often, concern over Gülen's activities is dismissed in the Turkish, U.S., and European media as mere paranoia. When Turkey's chief prosecutor indicted the AKP for attempting to undermine the secular constitution, the pro-Islamist media in Turkey along with Western diplomats and journalists dismissed the case as an "undemocratic judicial coup."[53] Yet at the same time, many of the same outlets and officials have hailed the Ergenekon indictment, assuming a dichotomy between Islamism and democracy on one hand, and secularism and fascism on the other.[54] The repeated branding in Islamist outlets of Turkey's Islamists as "reformist democrats" and of modern, secular Turks as "fundamentalists" has to be one of the most offensive but sadly effective lies in modern politics.

Indeed, Turkey has never seen a single incident of attacks on pious Muslims for fasting during Ramadan, whereas in recent years there have been many incidents of attacks on less-observant Turks for drinking alcohol or not fasting.[55] While women who cover their heads in the Islamic manner can move freely in any area of the country, uncovered women are increasingly unwelcome in certain regions and are often attacked.[56]

Contrary to the impression prevalent in the West—that the conflict is between religious Muslims and "anti-religion, secular Kemalists"—the fact remains that the majority of Turks, secular included, are traditional and observant Muslims many of whom define themselves primarily as "Muslims first."[57] While the Turkish constitution recognizes all Turkish citizens as "Turks," the dominant sentiment in the country has always been that in order to be considered a Turk, one must be Muslim. The complete absence of any non-Muslim governor, ambassador, or military or police officer attests to the prevalence of Islam's dominance in the Turkish establishment. Therefore, it appears Gülen is not fighting for more individual freedoms but to free Islam from the confines of the mosque and the private domain of individuals and to bring it to the public arena, to govern every aspect of life in the country.[58] AKP leaders, including Gül and Erdoğan, have repeatedly expressed their opposition to the "imprisonment of Islam in the mosque," demanding that it be present everywhere as a lifestyle. Most Turks vividly remember statements by AKP leaders not long ago rejecting the definition of secularism as "separation of mosque and state." Gül has slammed "secularism" on many occasions, including during a November 27, 1995 interview with The Guardian. What Turkey's Islamists really want is to remove the founding principles of the Turkish Republic. So long as U.S. and Western officials fail to recognize that Gülen's rhetoric of tolerance is only skin-deep, they may be setting the stage for a dialogue, albeit not of religious tolerance, but rather to find an answer to the question, "Who lost Turkey?"

Rachel Sharon-Krespin is the director of the Turkish Media Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Washington D.C.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

[1] Can Dündar, Milliyet (Istanbul), June 21, 2007; Reha Muhtar, Vatan (Istanbul), June 22, 2007.
[2] Milliyet, Mar. 10, 2008; Hürriyet (Istanbul), Mar. 10, 2008.
[3] Helen Rose Ebaugh and Dogan Koc, "Funding Gülen-Inspired Good Works: Demonstrating and Generating Commitment to the Movement," fgulen.com, Oct. 27, 2007.
[4] Merdan Yanardağ, Fethullah Gülen Hareketinin Perde Arkasi, Turkiye Nasil Kusatildi? (Istanbul: yah Beyaz Yayın, 2006), based on interviews with Nurettin Veren on Kanaltürk television, June 26, July 3, 2006.
[5] "Fethullah Gülen Is an Islamic Scholar and Peace Activist," International Conference on Fethullah Gülen, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Nov. 2007; J. J. Rogers, "Giants of Light: Fethullah Gülen and Meister Eckhart in Dialogue," The University of Texas, San Antonio, Tex., Nov. 3, 2007.
[6] See for example, Rogers, "Giants of Light"; USA Today, July 18, 2008.
[7] Bülent Aras, "Turkish Islam's Moderate Face," Middle East Quarterly, Sept. 1998, pp. 23-9.
[8] Anadolu Ajansı (Ankara), Feb. 10, 1998.

[9] Booklets on Anatolian Sufism with citations from Mevlana Celleddin Rumi distributed at the "Muslim World in Transition: Contributions of the Gulen Movement" conference, London, Oct. 25 – 27, 2007.
[10] Aland Mizell, "Clash of Civilizations versus Interfaith Dialogue: The Theories of Huntington and Gulen," KurdishMedia.com, Dec. 31, 2007; idem, "Are Islam and Kemalism Compatible? How Two Systems Have Impacted the Kurdish Question?" Iraq Updates, Nov. 28, 2007.
[11] Interview with Nurettin Veren, Kanaltürk television, June 26, 2006.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Sabah (Istanbul), Dec. 30, 2004.
[14] Veren interview, Kanaltürk, June 26, 2006.
[15] Cumhuriyet (Istanbul), Dec. 23, 2007.
[16] Bayram Balcı, "Central Asia: Fethullah Gulen's Missionary Schools," Oct. 2001.
[17] Interview with Merdan Yanardağ, Gerçek Gündem (Istanbul), Nov. 20, 2006.
[18] Hürriyet, Apr. 11, 2008.
[19] Erik-Jan Zürcher, "Kamermeerderheid Eist Onderzoek Naar Turkse Beweging," NOVA documentary, July 4, 2008.
[20] Cumhuriyet, July 9, 2008; Netherlands Information Services, July 11, 2008.
[21] Yanardağ, Fethullah Gülen Hareketinin Perde Arkasi, Turkiye Nasil Kusatildi?
[22] Adil Serdar Saçan, interview, Kanaltürk, July 3, 2006.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Samanyolu television, Oct. 13, 2008.
[25] See, for example, Michael Rubin, "Erdogan, Ergenekon, and the Struggle for Turkey," Mideast Monitor, Aug. 2008.
[26] Yanardağ interview, Gerçek Gündem, Nov. 20, 2006.
[27] Vatan, June 2, 2008; Hürriyet, June 2, 2008.
[28] "SOK! Tuggeneral Munir Erten den SOK aciklamalar!" accessed Oct. 27, 2008.
[29] "Sok Video! Cumhuriyet Savcisi Salim Demirci," accessed Oct. 27, 2008.
[30] Vakit (Istanbul), June 14, 2008.
[31] Vatan, June 2, 2008; Hürriyet, June 2, 2008.
[32] BBC News, Feb. 4, 2008; Frank Hyland, "Investigation of Turkey's 'Deep State' Ergenekon Plot Spreads to Military," Global Terrorism Analysis, Jamestown Foundation, July 16, 2008.
[33] Reuters, May 1, 2008; Sendika.org, Labornet Turkey, May 1, 2008; Vatan, May 1, 2, 2008; Milliyet, May 1, 2, 2008; Hürriyet, May 1, 2, 2008
[34] Vatan, May 2, 2008; Milliyet, May 2, 2008; Hürriyet, May 2, 8, 2008.
[35] Hürriyet, Feb. 28, 2008.
[36] Milliyet, May 14, 2008.
[37] Yanardağ, Fethullah Gülen Hareketinin Perde Arkasi, Turkiye Nasil Kusatildi?
[38] "Turkish Judiciary at War with AKP Government to Defend Its Independence," MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1520, Mar. 27, 2007.
[39] "The AKP Government's Attempt to Move Turkey from Secularism to Islamism (Part I): The Clash with Turkey's Universities," MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1014, Nov. 1, 2005; "Professor from Van University in Turkey Commits Suicide after Five Months in Jail without Trial," MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1025, Nov. 18, 2005.
[40] Zaman (Istanbul), Apr. 18, 2008.
[41] Odatv.com, May 30, 2008; Hürriyet, June 13, 2008; Akşam (Istanbul), June 16, 2008.
[42] Radikal (Istanbul), Apr. 7, 2008.
[43] Hürriyet, Oct. 21, 2008.
[44] Hürriyet, May 14, 2008.
[45] Hürriyet, Sept. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 2008.
[46] Milliyet, July 14, 2008; Cumhuriyet, July 15, 2008
[47] Turkish channel ATV, June 18, 1999.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.; "The Upcoming Elections in Turkey (2): The AKP's Political Power Base," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 375, July 19, 2007.
[50] Sabah, Jan. 2, 3, 2005.
[51] "Fethullah Gulen v. Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, et al," Case 2:07-cv-02148-SD, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Turkish Daily News (Ankara), Mar. 16, 2008; Vakit, June 7, 9, 2008; Yeni Şafak (Istanbul), June 9, 2008.
[54] Mustafa Akyol, "The Threat Is Secular Fundamentalism," International Herald Tribune, May 4, 2007; "Islam Will Modernize—If Secular Fundamentalists Allow," Turkish Daily News, May 15, 2007; "Mr. Logoglu Is Wrong, Considerably Wrong about Turkey," Turkish Daily News, May 24, 2007.
[55] Vatan, Aug. 21, 2008; Turkish Daily News, Sept. 23, 2008.
[56] Hürriyet, Feb. 14, 2008; Milliyet, Feb. 14, 2008; Vatan, Feb. 14, 2008, Cumhuriyet, Feb. 14, 2008.
[57] Yeni Şafak, July 7, 2006.
[58] "Turkish PM Erdogan in Speech during Term as Istanbul Mayor Attacks Turkey's Constitution, Describing It as 'A Huge Lie': 'Sovereignty Belongs Unconditionally and Always To Allah'; 'One Cannot Be a Muslim and Secular,'" MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1596, May 23, 2007.