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The Grand Turk

Erdogan's Enemy No. 1 Is Dead, But Behind His Death Lurks the Ghost of an Idea

2024-10-22

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Kamran Gasanov

[REGNUM] Prominent Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen has died in the United States at the age of 83. Can Erdogan breathe a sigh of relief?

Purely symbolically, one can say that the main enemy of the Turkish president is gone. At the same time, since 2016, the influence of the Gulenists in Turkey has been significantly undermined.

Gulen and Erdogan started out as ideological allies.

Both supported Islam, criticized Ataturk's secularism, aimed to introduce an Islamic model of society, and both were victims of the secular model and its iron fist in the form of the military.

Gülen followed the religious path from childhood, consciously. At the age of 10, he became a professional reader of the Koran, then a teacher of the Koran. The country's spiritual administration sent him on the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca. - Ed.) as an official.

In the 1970s, Gülen created his own movement, Hizmet, which translates from Turkish as “service.” He preached service to society and the state, called for interreligious dialogue, and exalted the role of education (“school before mosque”). These ideas became the harbinger of the creation of hundreds of schools and lyceums in Turkey, the CIS, and other countries.

Politically, Gülen advocated a more modern Islam, rejected extremes and radicalism. He believed that Islam was not in conflict with democracy, and supported Turkey's European integration. His teachings welcomed dialogue between Islamic movements.

By 1980, Gülen had become one of the most influential Muslim preachers in Turkey.

If he tried to establish an Islamic model through the creation of horizontal connections, education and cultivation of the future elite (teachers, judges, politicians, etc.) in his schools, Erdogan waged an active political struggle. First under the leadership of the founder of political Islam in Turkey, Necmetdin Erbakan, thanks to whom he became mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Then, after another military coup and the ban on the Welfare Party, he founded his own Justice and Development Party (AKP).

With it, Erdogan won the parliamentary elections in 2002 and began to gradually transform the secular republic into an Islamic one. This is where he needed strong allies from the Hizmet organization.

Gulen, who had been in the United States for medical treatment since 1999, supported the AKP. Gulenists saw Erdogan as a force capable of implementing their views.

During Erdogan's premiership, Hizmet strengthened its position. Lyceums and schools were established both inside and outside the country. By spreading the Turkish language, Islam and the positive image of the Ottoman Empire, they strengthened Turkey's soft power and, accordingly, benefited the AKP's foreign policy.

The second motivation for the alliance was the fight against the remnants of the Ataturk era - secular bureaucrats and generals. The former irritated Erdogan by limiting Islam in the country, the latter - by constant military coups, as a result of which Erbakan and Erdogan himself suffered.

By not interfering with and even helping Gulenists take up positions in the military, judicial and educational systems, the Turkish prime minister tried to weaken the secular elite. Erdogan did not hide his support for Gulen, calling him nothing less than "hodja" (mentor, teacher).

The Gülenists paid handsomely for such sympathy. They voted for the AKP in elections. The Gülen-controlled rating media (Zaman, Cihan, Samanyolu) extolled Erdogan and denounced the opposition. In 2008, as part of the Ergenekon affair, Erdogan carried out a purge of the Armed Forces and security agencies. The Gülenists welcomed these measures.

As Erdogan began to triumph over his secular opponents, competition emerged between yesterday's allies.

Erdogan headed the government, his party controlled the parliament, but Gulen influenced the youth, society, had a number of major media outlets at his disposal, including the Zaman newspaper, controlled financial flows through the same schools and the large bank Bank Asya. There was an official state, but in parallel to it there was also a Gulen state with people in all spheres of society - from mosque parishioners to diplomats.

As the Eastern proverb says: "You can't cook two sheep's heads in one pot." The prime minister began to fear the excessive influence of the Gulenists and decided to rein them in.

The beginnings of the conflict appeared back in 2010.

Then Erdogan sent the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, eight Turkish sailors were killed when the ship was stormed by an Israeli coast guard unit. Gulen called the operation an adventure that led to a rupture in strategic relations with Israel.

Three years later, the prime minister encroached on the “sacred.” He proposed closing the private schools of the “djemaat” (as members of the “Hizmet” movement were called, in other words, the “Muslim community.” — Ed.). The Turkish newspaper Taraf published an article under the headline “A plan to finish off Gulen.” It cites an excerpt from a 2004 document of the Turkish National Security Council, which outlines the goal of cleansing state structures of the “djemaat.”

Gulen did not remain in debt.

In December 2013, thanks in large part to the media under his control, a corruption scandal was provoked. The Gulenists had a dossier on almost every official in Turkey.

As part of Operation Big Bribe, the Financial Crime Department conducted searches in the homes of the sons of Foreign Minister Muammer Güler, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan and Urban Development Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar. The named ministers, as well as the Minister for European Integration Egemen Bagış, were accused of corruption. Moreover, $4.5 million in cash was found during the search at the head of the largest bank, Halk Bankası, Suleyman Aslan.

Erdogan had to change the government, which was a huge blow to his reputation. Critics thought that Erdogan's more than 10-year premiership was coming to an end. Six months before that, the biggest protests since his rise to power had died down in Gezi Park, where Gulen also criticized the actions of the prime minister and the police.

But it was the events of 2014 that really got Erdogan mad and showed him that Gulen was an enemy. That was where he got to the quick.

Not just ministers, but also the prime minister's son, Necmeddin Bilal, began to be accused of corruption. Turkish newspapers published photos of Bilal's meeting with a certain Saudi businessman, Yasin al-Qadi. Allegedly, under the cover of the prime minister's security, they negotiated the sale of a plot of land in a prestigious area of Istanbul, the price of which could reach a billion dollars.

An even more scandalous piece of material has leaked online via Gülen-controlled media: an audio recording of a conversation between the Turkish prime minister and his son, in which they discuss what to do with $30 million. A voice resembling Bilal asks whether Erdogan wants to keep some of it for himself, to which the other person replies: “Better not over the phone.”

Erdogan accused police and prosecutors of a plot orchestrated by " dark forces from abroad."

Turkey began to close down schools sponsored by Gulenists. Already in December 2014, an Istanbul court issued an arrest warrant for their leader. The arrest documents were forwarded to Interpol, but it did not reciprocate.

The conflict, which had gained momentum, reached its peak in 2016.

Two months before the July coup attempt, Erdogan shut down two major Gülen media outlets, the Cihan news agency and the Zaman newspaper. Then came July 15, the day the attempt to overthrow Erdogan arrived.

He placed all responsibility for this on Fethullah Gulen and his people. For his part, the preacher denied his guilt and said that Erdogan himself had faked the coup in order to deal with his opponents.

Be that as it may, the facts indicate the following.

During the uprising, 250 people were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded in a confrontation between supporters of the Turkish president and the putschists. As part of the “purge,” Erdogan’s government arrested more than 200,000 people, convicted 50,000 and fired about 140,000 civil servants.

The Hizmet movement was declared a terrorist organization and has since been known in Turkey as FETÖ. The prosecutor's office has requested two life sentences and 1,900 years in prison for Gülen.

In 2017, the preacher was stripped of his Turkish citizenship. Until his death, Erdogan had been trying to get the US to extradite Gulen, but the Americans refused. Since the coup, the Turkish president has been accusing Gulenists of all mortal sins, and their traces are found in almost every crime.

For example, in 2016, Erdogan admitted that Gulenists were connected to the pilots who shot down a Russian bomber in Syria. They were also accused of organizing an assassination attempt on the Russian ambassador to Ankara, Andrei Karlov.

Gulen's death may make Erdogan both sad and happy at the same time.

Who knows how the political fate of the Turkish president would have turned out if not for the founder of Hizmet?

Erdogan owes his success partly to the Gulenists, and the latter have much to thank the former prime minister for. However, the events of 2013-2014 and 2016 made Gulen an eternal enemy of the 70-year-old Turkish president. So even if he remembers the bright periods of their friendship, hatred probably outweighs nostalgia. One powerful enemy less.

However, it is too early for Erdogan to relax.

Gülen's power was not only in his name, but also in his movement. It is not difficult to kill a person, but it is much more difficult to kill an idea. Gülen's ideas are followed secretly and openly by millions of people in Turkey and beyond.

And besides, even if the Gülenists are weakened, it cannot be ruled out that they could form an alliance with those who now pose a great danger to the extension of the president’s power: the Republican People’s Party and the Kurds.

And if you add foreign funding to this – the Democrats in the US, for example, are not giving up their attempts to overthrow Erdogan,

…the Democrats, really? I had no idea…

who has declared war on Zionism – then the result could be quite unpredictable.

It is not for nothing that the head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry and former intelligence director Hakan Fidan said that “ the leader of this dark organization is dead,” but his death “ will not lead to complacency,” since FETÖ is an organization that “ recruits youth.”

Posted by:badanov

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