Fethullah Gülen's Grand Ambition Part I I

 

Turkey's Islamist Danger

by Rachel Sharon-Krespin

2^nd part of 3

Eviscerating Checks and Balances

Fethullahists have also made inroads into Turkey's 200,000-strong police force. Their infiltration has had a compounding effect, as Fethullahist officials have purged officials more loyal to the republic than the hocaefendi. According to Veren, "There are imam security directors; imams wearing police uniforms. Many police commissioners get their orders from imams."[21] Adil Serdar Saçan, former director of the organized crimes unit within the Istanbul Directorate of Security, confirmed these statements in reports he prepared on the Fethullahist organization within the security apparatus. In a 2006 interview, he said,

Fethullahists began organizing inside the security apparatus in the 1970s. In police academies, students were being taken to ışıkevi by class commissioners. One of those commissioners is now the director of intelligence at the Turkish Directorate of Security. During my time at the [police] academy, those in the directorate who did not have ties to the [Gülen] organization were all pensioned off or fired in 2002 when the AKP came to power. … I was at the top of my class when I graduated from the police academy, and throughout the twenty-four years of my career, I maintained and was honored for my stellar record. After 2002, the AKP blocked my promotions. They promoted only those officers whose files were tainted with allegations that they were engaged in reactionary Islamist activities. … Belonging to a certain cemaat has become a prerequisite for advancement in the force. At present, over 80 percent of the officers at supervisory level in the general security organization are members of the [Gülen] cemaat.[22]

Such statements, however, may have consequences.[23] In October 2008, Turkish police arrested Saçan on suspicion of involvement in the so-called Ergenekon plot to overthrow the Turkish state.[24] Most Turkish analysts believe that the Ergenekon conspiracy, short of any evidence of unconstitutional activities, is more a mechanism by which the Turkish government can harass critics.[25]

Writer and journalist Merdan Yanardağ provided statistics to illuminate the Islamist penetration of the Ankara Directorate of Security. He explained,

Prior to Ramadan, personnel at the Directorate of Security in Ankara were asked whether they would be fasting during Ramadan, in order to establish the number of meals that would be needed during that period. Of the 4,200 employees, only seventeen indicated that they would not be fasting. Considering that some of the seventeen might have been sick or taking medications, the numbers speak for themselves. [26]

Wiretapping scandals in spring 2008 also highlighted Gülenist penetration of the security service's most important units. After the Turkish Security Directorate obtained a blanket court permit in April 2007 to monitor and record all the communications in Turkey including mobile and land-line telephones, SMS text messaging, e-mail, fax, and Internet communications,[27] Turks have grown uneasy about having telephone conversations fearing intrusion into their privacy. Recent leaks to pro-AKP media of recordings of military personnel meetings, lectures, top secret military documents, strategic antiterrorism plans, private medical files of commanders, and contents of personal conversations between state prosecutors have shocked the nation as has the appearance on the Internet video site YouTube of some of those recordings.

The alleged network of Fethullah followers in the security system has an impact on domestic affairs as they use restricted technology or privileged information to further their political agenda. In February 2008, for example, several websites posted the voice recording of a secret speech delivered by Brig. Gen. Münir Erten announcing the timing of an upcoming Turkish military operation into Iraqi Kurdistan, details of a private discussion with the chief of the General Staff, and private information concerning Gen. Ergin Saygun's health.[28] The following month, several websites including YouTube posted a secretly recorded conversation between prosecutor Salim Demirci and a colleague regarding Erdoğan and Efkan Ala, then governor of Diyarbakir and subsequently a counselor of Erdoğan's office. Erdoğan responded by ordering a criminal investigation against Demirci.[29] In June 2008, the Islamist Vakit published Saygun's entire medical file, disclosing information about his diabetes as well as the treatments and medications he had received in the Gülhane military hospital.[30] Others whose tapped conversations appeared on Islamist websites and in Gülen's newspaper network included Erdoğan Teziç, the former head of Turkey's Higher Education Council, and prominent members of the center-left opposition Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP). Many Turkish journalists believe that Fethullahist-dominated police tap their communications, and according to reports, the head of the wiretapping unit, who was appointed by Erdoğan in August 2005, is a Fethullah follower.[31] Islamist newspapers including Vakit, Yeni Şafak, Zaman, and the pro-AKP Taraf published leaks from private conversations held inside government offices and military headquarters. The Islamist, pro-AKP media has reported alleged confidential evidence relating to the police investigation of the so-called Ergenekon plot that posits a secularist cabal of military officers, journalists, and professors sought to overthrow the AKP government.[32] The net effect of such leaks is to tar the reputations of or intimidate AKP's political opponents and the Turkish military.

Islamization within police ranks also contributes to police brutality against anti-AKP demonstrators. On May 1, 2008, the police used gas bombs, pepper gas, water cannons, and clubs against workers who wanted to celebrate May Day peacefully in Istanbul's Taksim Square, the traditional site of demonstrations in Turkey's largest city; scores were injured.[33] Labor unions and opposition parties condemned the police brutality and accused Erdoğan of using police to silence opposition voices.[34] Police also suppressed labor protests in Tuzla (Istanbul) shipyards.[35] Similarly, police have harassed individual citizens after they criticized Erdoğan's policies. Erdoğan's own security guards abducted a 46-year-old man from Antalya for speaking out in public against his social security policies, taking the man to a deserted location where the guards beat and threatened him. The victim alleged that his attackers said they could easily plant guns or drugs on him and kill him.[36]

While Turkey's military is guarantor of the constitution, Veren alleged that Fethullahists had also entrenched themselves within the military, police, and other professions:

The Fethullahist military officers were once our students, who we financially supported, educated, and assisted. When these grateful children graduated and reached influential positions, they put themselves and their positions at the service of Fethullah Gülen … [Gülen] directs and instructs, and, through them, maintains power within the state … When Gülen's students graduate from the police or military academies—as do the new doctors and lawyers—they present their first salaries to Fethullah Gülen as a gesture of their gratitude. Newly graduated officers even bring him the swords that they receive during the graduation ceremony.[37]

According to Veren, Gülen has argued that the military expels no more than one in forty Islamist officers; the rest remain in undercover cells. While such allegations may seem the stuff of conspiracy theory, recent leaks to pro-AKP media suggest a number of Islamist sources within the military ranks, creating speculation that followers of Gülen now populate the senior infrastructure of the Turkish General Staff. Such speculation gained additional credence after the August 2008 Supreme Military Council (Yüksek Askeri Şura, YAŞ), which, for the first time, declined to expel suspected Islamists from military ranks.

The AKP government has also aided the Gülen movement with its reorientation of the judiciary. Over the first five years of his rule, Erdoğan replaced thousands of judges and prosecutors with AKP appointees. Now that the president is Islamist, it is unlikely that he would veto the appointment of Islamists to the bench, as did his predecessor Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Indeed, it now appears that the government intends to appoint thousands more to judicial positions.[38] The AKP has also enacted a law that would require applicants for judgeships to first interview with AKP bureaucrats in order better to gauge and adjudicate applicants' adherence to Islam. The results of the AKP's targeting of the judicial system are already apparent as anti-secular, pro-AKP officials have been at the forefront of some controversial trials, such as the case against Van University president Yücel Aşkın,[39] the Şemdinli investigation in which the prosecutor tried to implicate Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt before he became chief of the General Staff, and, most recently, the Ergenekon probe.

Indeed, it is such overtly political and vindictive prosecutions that have led some former Gülen sympathizers, such as University of Utah political scientist Hakan Yavuz, to a change of heart. In one interview, Yavuz told odatv.com that four important legal cases had changed his thinking: the case against Aşkın; the Semdinli case; the Atabeyler operation, uncovered in 2005, involving an organized crime group with alleged plans to assassinate Prime Minister Erdoğan;[40] and the Ergenekon probe. Yavuz explained, "The cemaat has attempted to steer all four cases. Look at the slanderous reports in archives of the cemaat's newspapers, how they defamed Yucel Aşkın. And now it's Ergenekon. Keeping [prominent] personalities in jail for over a year without indictment is inexplicable." Yavuz also suggested Gülen's cemaat spoke differently to its members than to outsiders and that it was pursuing a political agenda that conflicted with the founding philosophy of the modern Turkish republic. He accused Fethullahists of "co-optation" and said that they were recruiting people and paying them money—without any formal receipts or records—to write and speak favorably about the movement while criticizing the secular Turkish state.[41]

Rachel Sharon-Krespin