60 Minutes On The Gülen Movement
May 14, 2012 § 6 Comments
Another Monday, another post about 60 Minutes. Last night’s segment of interest was on Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen movement, and centered on the growing number of Gülen charter schools in the U.S. The gist of the report was that Gülen is himself a secretive figure whose true motivations cannot be entirely ascertained, but that he preaches a tolerant brand of Islam focused on education and social mobility and that his Harmony Charter Schools are by all accounts doing great work while at the same time stirring up controversy by appearing to skirt immigration laws. On the whole, the segment’s tone was a positive one, and in a lot of ways it painted Gülen as a cleric who fits in well with the general American creed of hard work, education, and capitalist ethos leading to success. The Gülenists, who can be notoriously thin-skinned, have to be happy with 60 Minutes for portraying them in a good light.
Far more interesting to me is not what 60 Minutes reported but what it didn’t report. All Turks of every political stripe would find it inconceivable that a major American network did a profile on Gülen and his followers without one mention of either Prime Minister Erdoğan or the AKP. In fact, someone with no prior knowledge of Gülenists at all would have thought after watching the report that the Gülen movement has little role in Turkish politics and is nothing more than a somewhat shadowy business conglomerate. The reality is that the Gülenists and the AKP have long been intertwined in many ways with their twin rises coinciding with each other, and the AKP’s decade in power has led to Gülenists now filling many high posts in Turkey’s judiciary and police. Gülen and his followers are not easily separated from politics and their many business interests are not the only part of the story. Gülen media organs, such as Zaman, championed Erdoğan’s rise and now consistently back him, and it has been alleged that the Ergenekon investigation is a reward to the Gülenists as a way for them to get back at the military that oppressed them during the 1980s. While recently there have been rumblings of a power struggle between the Gülen movement and the AKP, the fact remains that it is difficult to discuss one without discussing the other, yet this is the very feat that CBS managed to pull off. For someone who studies Turkey, it came off as a very strange omission.
One thing to give 60 Minutes credit for is that it did not give undeserved airtime to those arguing that the Gülen schools represent a secret plot to introduce creeping Islamization or sharia into American society. To begin with, while the Gülenists are controversial in Turkey because they often come off as a personality cult, there is little question that Gülen preaches tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and a distinctly non-confontational brand of Islam. The folks who rail against Gülen and his schools on ideological grounds have a problem with Islam in general and not with anything that Gülen is saying. There is also the inconvenient fact that the schools are all public charters, which means that like any other public school in this country, there is no religious instruction or school-supported religious activity of any kind. Opening a group of public charter schools would be a pretty boneheaded way of trying to carry out a program of religious indoctrination given that there is literally zero space or opportunity for religion to be pushed, and whatever else people may think of Gülen and his followers, stupid is one of the last words that comes to mind.
Most people who saw the 60 Minutes report probably came away with the impression that Gülen is a secretive guy who genuinely believes in promoting math and science education and whose followers are looking for creative ways to come to the U.S. and carry out this message while simultaneously making money. I don’t think this is a bad read on the situation at all, but given the fact that Lesley Stahl went to Turkey to see what was going on for herself, the absence (aside from a few seconds from Andrew Finkel) of any reporting related to the movement’s political activities in Turkey and the intense controversy that it has stirred up surrounding the prosecution of the military and its critics – no doubt Ahmet Şık would have had something interesting to say on the matter – was odd to say the least. Does this mean that CBS and 60 Minutes are naive or guilty of sloppy reporting once again, or is this more fodder for those who conspiratorially proclaim the awesome and secretive power of the cemaat to silence its accusers? Given what we saw from 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, I’d vote for the former, but no doubt the latter explanation will quickly gain currency among those who see Gülen’s hand in everything that goes on related to Turkey.
Coup Country
April 16, 2012 § Leave a comment
Following the arrest of the generals involved in the 1997 “post-modern coup” that toppled Necemttin Erbakan’s government and outlawed his Refah Party, Erdoğan yesterday declared the era of military coups over and said that Turkey is no longer a “coup country.” While this appears to be a dangerous prediction given Turkey’s history, the purging of generals and the prosecution of officers as part of the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer investigations, along with the trials for the September 12 and February 28 coup plotters, means that Erdoğan is probably right. The military is no longer in a position to overthrow the government and was badly exposed when it tried unsuccessfully to intimidate the AKP from appointing Abdullah Gül as president, and the various reprisals it has suffered over the past few years are going to have the intended effect of keeping the officers in their barracks.
Few people will argue that this is a bad thing. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, civilian control of the military is a hallmark of democracy and Turkey has finally established true vertical accountability. At the same time, Erdoğan must not use his newfound unfettered power to create a different type of problem for Turkey’s democracy. While military interference in democratic politics is a bad thing, so is using democratic institutions to advance creeping authoritarianism. Worrisome signs abound, including the fact that the investigations into the military have been trumped up and relied on forged documents, and opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has denounced the recent arrest of the February 28 generals as motivated by a desire for revenge. After all, Erdoğan was a Refah member and a disciple of Erbakan, and the harsher restrictions placed on public displays of religion following the coup must have rankled Erdoğan personally. Now that the military is out of the picture as a constraint – and Erdoğan’s declaration of Turkey being coup proof indicates that he himself now feels that his freedom of movement is unrestrained by the army – it is crucial that the temptation of bending the rules to make the AKP a permanent ruling party is avoided. Turkey has made great strides in some areas, such as empowering the ability of Turks to participate in democratic politics with an increased voice on constitutional issues, and now that the structural constraint of military oversight is gone, it will be an encouraging sign for Turkey’s democratic future if the government does not now overreach and crack down further on groups that present challenges to its rule, real or perceived.
The Başbuğ Trial and Government Overreach
March 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
Former Turkish Chief of Staff Ilker Başbuğ’s trial is underway, and he made headlines on Tuesday by walking out of the courtroom after denouncing the entire proceedings as a sham and as a black stain on Turkey’s reputation. It probably did not help matters that the court is actively trying to appeal to the darker side of public sentiment by asking its very first question about a picture of Başbuğ in Israel at the Western Wall, as if this is somehow ipso facto proof of his guilt. Başbuğ is determined not to go down quietly, and his lack of reticence may highlight the fact that the government went too far in charging him and mark the beginning of a shift in the power imbalance that has developed between the civilian government and the army. This piece in Hurriyet is a good rundown of the various absurdities contained in the Başbuğ indictment, from conflicting claims as to the general’s place within Ergenekon to lack of evidence to support the charge of violence to whether the allegations even support the ultimate indictment.
Up until this point, however, such inconveniences have not prevented Turkey’s generals from being convicted and imprisoned. Aside from Başbuğ, prosecutors yesterday asked from 15-20 years for 365 officers who are Sledgehammer suspects, and half of all of Turkey’s admirals and 10% of its active duty generals are already in prison on charges of conspiring to overthrow the AKP government. The government has eviscerated the power and authority of the military and jailed generals almost at will, and there is no question that Erdoğan and other top officials clearly have the upper hand over the military. This is not generally a bad thing, as complete vertical accountability – in which there is no unelected official or group at the top that has the final say in state affairs – is a requirement of true democracy, but the pendulum has shifted so far in the government’s direction that few take the slew of allegations against members from every branch of the Turkish armed forces as legitimate. Indeed, it is almost certain that the Sledgehammer documents were forged but up until this point the government has not faced any real consequences or pubic outcry for its actions against military officers that are clearly trumped up.
With Başbuğ, however, the government went after its biggest target to date and it may have committed a bad misstep. If Başbuğ continues to push back hard against the legitimacy of the charges against him and even the authority of the special court set up to try him (rather than the Supreme State Council), it might be a turning point in the government’s efforts to root out military plots, imagined or otherwise.
