Anatomy Of A Power Struggle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Claire Berlinski While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs no introduction, the Turkish imam Fethullah G\u00fclen is probably the most important person you\u2019ve never heard about. He is an immensely powerful figure in Turkey, and\u2014to put it mildly\u2014a controversial one. He is also an increasingly powerful figure globally. Today, there are between three and six million G\u00fclen followers. G\u00fclen leads the\u00a0cemaat<\/em>, an Islamic civil society movement, that has until now been critical to the electoral success of Erdogan\u2019s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The\u00a0cemaat<\/em>\u00a0is often described as Turkey\u2019s Third Force\u2014the other two being the AKP and the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n G\u00fclen has been living in the Poconos since March 1999. Shortly after he decamped to the United States, ostensibly for medical treatment, Turkish television broadcast footage of the imam instructing his followers to infiltrate the organs of the state. He was prosecuted in absentia for seeking to overthrow the Turkish constitution. The charges were dismissed in 2008, so there is no longer any legal obstacle preventing him from returning to Turkey. But he remains in the United States where, among other things, he is a large player in the U.S. charter school business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the movement purports to be structured informally, this is generally not the view of scholars who are not on its payroll, or of those who have left its ranks. Almost uniformly, they observe that the movement\u2019s organizational structure is strict, hierarchical, and undemocratic. So are its tenets. G\u00fclenists assiduously cultivate the image of G\u00fclen and his movement as tolerant, peace-loving, and modern. G\u00fclen indeed sponsors lavish interfaith dialogue events, while his schools, cultural centers, conferences, newspapers, and television stations are the more important platform for the promotion of his agenda, which is decidedly less tolerant and modern. G\u00fclen, for example, has expressed the belief that the penalty for apostasy should be death\u2014if the transgressor fails to return to the Islamic fold by more peaceful means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n G\u00fclen says he does not wish to be involved in politics, but has nonetheless\u2014until recently\u2014used his influence, and particularly his vast media empire, to promote the AKP. This alliance was logical: G\u00fclen and the AKP shared important goals, such as promoting a larger role for religion in Turkey and a smaller role for the military. The AKP and G\u00fclen also shared a vision of expanding Turkish influence abroad, particularly in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. The movement has been instrumental in promoting Turkish business interests in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the AKP and the G\u00fclen movement are by no means identical. Indeed, while a number of AKP MPs are followers of G\u00fclen, Erdogan is not. G\u00fclen and his followers can best be described as political opportunists; when the military removed Refah Party Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan from power in 1996, G\u00fclen positioned himself with the military. Later, his loyalties shifted to the AKP, which was an outgrowth of Refah. Generally, G\u00fclen seeks to attach himself to power, cooperate with it, and use it to his advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AKP and the cemaat<\/em> for a time found each other extremely useful. The cemaat<\/em>\u2019s assiduous penetration of the police and the judiciary allowed Erdogan to confront the military and other key obstacles to the enlargement of his power; cemaat<\/em>-controlled media organs generated public support for this. Erdogan was content to use the prosecution of suspected coup plotters (collectively referred to as the \u201cErgenekon\u201d conspiracy) to purge his own enemies. But now that the government, with G\u00fclen\u2019s help, has largely demoralized the military, confined its most serious ideological opponents to prison, and terrified the rest into silence, the inevitable is happening. The victors are fighting over the spoils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tensions began to rise over the \u201cErgenekon\u201d investigations, which have grown increasingly embarrassing for the AKP. Hundreds of serving and retired military officers, including former Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug, have been jailed, along with elected MPs and prominent academics. The arrests of journalists in particular have given rise to tremendous criticism, prompting Erdogan to dismiss the case\u2019s lead prosecutor, Zekeriya \u00d6z, the G\u00fclenist mastermind of the \u201cErgenekon\u201d probe. Still, while Erdogan appeared to be discomfited by this, he was willing to accept it; if a bit of embarrassment was the price he had to pay for getting rid of his enemies, so be it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then, the cemaat<\/em> began going after Erdogan\u2019s friends. His trusted intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, is seen by the cemaat<\/em> as soft\u2014soft on Iran, but more importantly, soft on the Kurdish Worker\u2019s Party (PKK). The cemaat<\/em> is intensely hostile to the leftist (indeed, neo-Maoist) PKK, and when the news broke last year that Fidan had entered into secret negotiations with the group, it was apparently too much for G\u00fclen to bear. The tension finally broke into the open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On February 7, special prosecutor Sadrettin Sar\u0131kaya, who had been investigating the KCK, the alleged urban branch of the PKK, ordered the detention of Fidan, Fidan\u2019s predecessor Emre Taner, and two others. Erdogan took the maneuver as a direct assault on his authority. Within days, the AKP drafted a new law making it impossible for the Justice Department to prosecute employees of MIT (Milli Istihbarat Teskilat\u0131<\/em>, or National Intelligence Organization) without the prime minister\u2019s consent. The G\u00fclen movement was enraged; a furious backlash ensued in the G\u00fclenist press, which ran articles lambasting the party as authoritarian and accusing it of endangering Turkish democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For newspapers that had spent years applauding Erdogan and the AKP and relentlessly supporting his ever-increasing authoritarianism, this was a remarkable reversal. The fight, however, was not just about Fidan. It was also about Erdogan\u2019s increasing discomfort with G\u00fclen\u2019s control over the judiciary and police, and the growing political cost of the sprawling investigations launched by the special authority courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much to the G\u00fclenists\u2019 dismay, Erdogan was not chastened by their maneuvers. To the contrary, he was enraged. With a speed that astonished observers, the government removed Sar\u0131kaya from the MIT case. The General Directorate for Security dismissed nine officials in the Istanbul police department who had been working in a KCK operations unit. Two other high-ranking police officials were also removed, and for good measure the chief prosecutors for various cases were reassigned to different posts. The message was perfectly clear: Erdogan, not G\u00fclen, controlled Turkey. To make sure no one misunderstood, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin gave the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors permission to begin an investigation into Sar\u0131kaya on suspicion of violating the secrecy of the prosecution and abusing his power. To establish that no one misunderstood, 700 Istanbul police officers working in departments related to intelligence, terrorism, and organized crime in the Istanbul Emniyet were reassigned to the southeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next stage in the growing power struggle involved, of all things, soccer. The July 2011 arrest of Aziz Yildirim, the president of the Fenerbah\u00e7e sport club, on charges of match-fixing was of course about much more than European football; Yildirim is a major defense contractor for NATO. With him out of the way, many lucrative jobs could go to G\u00fclen\u2019s star entrepreneur, Ahmet \u00c7al\u0131k.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the attack on Yildirim proved a serious misjudgment. The importance of football in Turkey cannot be underestimated (or understood, so don\u2019t try). Fenerbah\u00e7e fans were enraged by Yildirim\u2019s arrest. They took to the streets in massive numbers repeatedly, and were repeatedly tear-gassed; the videos of fans, many of them women, some even in headscarves, and children, being gassed by G\u00fclenist \u201crobocops\u201d in full battle regalia circulated all over Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AKP\u2019s fear of a massive loss of votes if immensely popular footballers were to end up in prison for many years, prompted the party to propose limiting the maximum penalty for the crimes with which they were charged. Then, while Erdogan was in the hospital, President Abdullah G\u00fcl (who is known for having better relations with the G\u00fclen movement) vetoed the bill. It was the first time in his four-year presidency that G\u00fcl had done so, and it was not at all a coincidence that this happened when Erdogan was in the hospital, being treated, or so his doctors said, for intestinal polyps. (The rumors that in fact he has colon cancer were and remain persistent, and they were obviously taken seriously by many of his supporters in the AKP, who believed it might be wise to throw in their lot with the G\u00fclenists.) When Erdogan emerged from the hospital looking, at the very least, alive, parliament overrode the veto. Erdogan won the round, but the divide with the G\u00fclenists was now impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final straw was the prime minister\u2019s attempt to abolish the special authority courts\u2014which left the G\u00fclenists positively hysterical. H\u00fcseyin G\u00fclerce, G\u00fclen\u2019s mouthpiece in Turkey, wrote columns with such striking rage and paranoia about these proposals that they would no doubt have been fodder for satirists were Turkish satirists not all too aware of what happens to their ilk. The move to abolish the courts followed the arrest of former Commander-in-Chief Ilker Basbug. This prompted Erdogan to say he was \u201cdisturbed\u201d by the unending raids against current and former military officers, and to urge the prosecution to get their investigation \u201cover and done with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outsiders might not notice that something has gone terribly wrong between Erdogan and G\u00fclen. Neither has anything to gain from a visible power struggle. According to AKP MP (and former Erdogan advisor) Yal\u00e7\u0131n Akdogan, the impression of a conflict with the G\u00fclen movement has been intentionally exaggerated; it is certainly true that opponents of both Erdogan and G\u00fclen are greatly enjoying the discord. In June, Erdogan publicly invited G\u00fclen to return to Turkey; two days later, G\u00fclen declined, weeping (as he often does) as he expressed his fears that his return might damage his movement\u2019s achievements. Erdogan\u2019s invitation to G\u00fclen was interpreted by some as a peace offering, but it was far from one. Erdogan simply had called G\u00fclen\u2019s bluff and cloaked it in a guise of magnanimity. It was a political master stroke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Erdogan is now endeavoring to shore up the support of the conservative wing of his party, proffering political favors to politicians capable of helping him erect an anti-G\u00fclen alliance. Meanwhile, rumor has it that the G\u00fclenists are considering putting their weight behind the more sympathetic Abdullah G\u00fcl as their politician of choice (one who recently signaled that he might run for another presidential term). Should he do so, it will end Erdogan\u2019s vision of an easy ascent to a presidency with enhanced powers, and in all likelihood engender a split in the AKP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rivalry may have healthy consequences. The G\u00fclen media is finally covering stories that should have long ago been covered in a society with a vibrant opposition press. The pressure to eliminate the courts with special authority was long overdue. (Sadly, it has not resulted in the release of most of those arrested.) But it could also result in a race to the bottom, with both camps striving to blackmail, jail, and intimidate members of the other, while simultaneously attempting to position themselves as the more authentic defenders of Turkish nationalism and Islam\u2014neither of which are ideologies known to give rise, historically, to anything we would recognize as a liberal democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Claire Berlinski is the American Foreign Policy Council\u2019s Senior Fellow for Turkey, based in Istanbul. She is the author of <\/em> There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters (Basic Books, 2011), and of <\/em>Menace in Europe: Why the Continent\u2019s Crisis is America\u2019s, Too (Crown Forum, 2006).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AN OFFICIAL REPORT FROM: AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY COUNCIL Anatomy Of A Power Struggle By Claire BerlinskiThe Journal of International Security AffairsDecember 19, 2012 While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs no introduction, the Turkish imam Fethullah G\u00fclen is probably the most important person you\u2019ve never heard about. He is an immensely powerful figure in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4123,"featured_media":68792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10808],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-claire-berlinski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64535","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\/4123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Journal of International Security Affairs<\/em>
December 19, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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