{"id":33600,"date":"2011-05-13T08:55:35","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T05:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=33600"},"modified":"2014-01-06T01:44:31","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T23:44:31","slug":"gulen-should-return-to-turkey-bahceli-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/05\/13\/gulen-should-return-to-turkey-bahceli-says\/","title":{"rendered":"G\u00fclen should return to Turkey, Bah\u00e7eli says"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANKARA – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/p>\n

The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party says his party is not planning to go to court over the tape scandal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The head of Turkey\u2019s nationalist opposition party has issued a challenge to an influential religious leader living abroad, saying he should return to Turkey if he wants to be involved in discussions about the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurkey has been trapped inside an equilateral triangle\u201d of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, religious leader Fethullah G\u00fclen and imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, or PKK, Abdullah \u00d6calan, according to Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, leader Devlet Bah\u00e7eli.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see benefit in the return of G\u00fclen to Turkey to be able to know Turkey\u2019s issues in depth,\u201d he said in an interview with daily Milliyet published Thursday.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Bah\u00e7eli also lashed out at the state institutions, accusing them of inaction in investigating and halting the release of hidden-camera footage that has rocked his party in recent weeks \u2013 a scandal in which he has accused G\u00fclen of involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cState institutions are indifferent to the developments. The experts of the theology departments are silent,\u201d the MHP chief said. He added, however, that his party is not planning to go to court over the tape scandal.<\/p>\n

Erdo\u011fan suggested Wednesday that the country\u2019s intelligence services had intervened in the scandal to stop the release of such tapes online.<\/p>\n

With just weeks left to go before the June 12 general election, the MHP has been hit with three waves of a tape scandal featuring the online release of R-rated footage of senior party members, ending the political career of five of them.<\/p>\n

The MHP brass has accused Erdo\u011fan\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of being behind the tape releases, which they claim are part of a plot to keep the MHP from receiving enough votes to be represented in Parliament.<\/p>\n

Bah\u00e7eli has also indirectly targeted the Fethullah G\u00fclen community, a Turkish religious group whose leader lives in the United States, as the source of this plot. G\u00fclen denied the allegations in a written statement this week.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Milliyet, Bah\u00e7eli said G\u00fclen\u2019s return to Turkey would allow the religious leader to offer better guidance and make healthier evaluations.<\/p>\n

G\u00fclen has been living in the United States since 1999. Legal barriers before his return were removed last year but his aides argue his health condition does not allow him to take overseas flights for the time being.<\/p>\n

Speaking Thursday in the western province of Edirne as part of his election campaign, Bah\u00e7eli described the June polls as \u201ccrucially important,\u201d saying that what the ruling party has brought in the nine years of its government was unemployment and poverty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the realities of Turkey. There is a huge difference between this reality and what Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan is saying on television,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

via G\u00fclen should return to Turkey, Bah\u00e7eli says – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News The leader of the Nationalist Movement Party says his party is not planning to go to court over the tape scandal. The head of Turkey\u2019s nationalist opposition party has issued a challenge to an influential religious leader living abroad, saying he should return to Turkey if he wants to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":33603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[120],"class_list":["post-33600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-gulen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}