![\"ERDOGAN----\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/ERDOGAN-.jpg\")
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by Guest Columnists<\/p>\n
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By Dani Rodrik<\/p>\n
T\u00dcRKAN Saylan was a trailblazing physician, one of Turkey\u2019s first female dermatologists and a leading campaigner against leprosy. She was also a staunch secularist who established a foundation to provide scholarships to young girls so they could attend school. In 2009, police raided her house and confiscated documents in an investigation that linked her to an alleged terrorist group, called \u201cErgenekon,\u201d supposedly bent on destabilizing Turkey in order to precipitate a military coup.<\/p>\n
Saylan was terminally ill with cancer at the time and died shortly thereafter. But the case against her associates continued and became part of a vast wave of trials directed against opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan and his allies in the powerful G\u00fclen movement, made up of the followers of the Islamic preacher Fethullah G\u00fclen.<\/p>\n
The evidence in this case, as in so many others, consists of Microsoft Word documents found on a computer that belonged to Saylan\u2019s foundation. When American experts recently examined the forensic image of the hard drive, they made a startling \u2013 but for Turkey all too familiar \u2013 discovery. The incriminating files had been placed on the hard drive sometime after the computer\u2019s last use at the foundation. Because the computer had been seized by the police, the finding pointed rather directly to official malfeasance.<\/p>\n
Fabricated evidence, secret witnesses, and flights of investigative fancy are the foundation of the show trials that Turkish police and prosecutors have mounted since 2007. In the infamous Sledgehammer case, a military-coup plot was found to contain glaring anachronisms, including the use of Microsoft Office 2007 in documents supposedly last saved in 2003. (My father-in-law is among the more than 300 officers who were locked up, and my wife and I have been active in documenting the case\u2019s fabrications.)<\/p>\n
The list of revelations and absurdities goes on and on. In one case, a document describing a plot directed against Christian minorities turned out to have been in police possession before the authorities claimed to have recovered it from a suspect. In another, police \u201cdiscovered\u201d the evidence that they were seeking, despite going to the wrong address and raiding the home of a naval officer whose name sounded similar to that of the target.<\/p>\n
Yet none of the trials has yet been derailed. Most have had the support and blessing of Erdo\u011fan, who has exploited them to discredit the old secular guard and cement his rule. Even more important, the trials have had the strong backing of the G\u00fclen movement.<\/p>\n
G\u00fclen lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, where he presides over a huge informal network of schools, think tanks, businesses, and media across five continents. His devotees have established roughly 100 charter schools in the United States alone, and the movement has gained traction in Europe since the first G\u00fclen school was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1995.<\/p>\n
Back home, G\u00fclen\u2019s followers have created what is effectively a state within the Turkish state, gaining a strong foothold in the police force, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy. G\u00fclenists deny that they control the Turkish police, but, as a US ambassador to Turkey put it in 2009, \u201cwe have found no one who disputes it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The movement\u2019s influence within the judiciary ensures that its members\u2019 transgressions remain unchallenged. In one well-documented case, a non-commissioned officer at a military base, acting on behalf of the G\u00fclen movement, was caught planting documents in order to embarrass military officials. The military prosecutor investigating the case soon found himself in jail on trumped-up charges, while the perpetrator was reinstated. A senior police commissioner who had been close to the movement and wrote an expos\u00e9 about its activities was accused of collaborating with the far-left groups that he had spent much of his career pursuing; he, too, ended up in jail.<\/p>\n
The G\u00fclen movement uses these trials to lock up critics and replace opponents in important state posts. The ultimate goal seems to be to reshape Turkish society in the movement\u2019s own conservative-religious image. G\u00fclenist media have been particularly active in this cause, spewing a continuous stream of disinformation about defendants in G\u00fclen-mounted trials while covering up police misdeeds.<\/p>\n
But relations between Erdo\u011fan and the G\u00fclenists have soured. Once their common enemy, the secularists, were out of the way, Erdo\u011fan had less need for the movement. The breaking point came in February 2012, when G\u00fclenists tried to bring down his intelligence chief, a close confidant, reaching perilously close to Erdo\u011fan himself. Erdo\u011fan responded by removing many G\u00fclenists from their positions in the police and judiciary.<\/p>\n
But Erdo\u011fan\u2019s ability to take on the G\u00fclen movement is limited. Bugging devices were recently found in Erdo\u011fan\u2019s office, planted, his close associates said, by the police. Yet Erdo\u011fan, known for his brash style, responded with remarkable equanimity. If he harbored any doubt that the movement sits on troves of embarrassing \u2013 and possibly far worse \u2013 intelligence, the bugging revelation must surely have removed it.<\/p>\n
The foreign media have focused mainly on Erdo\u011fan\u2019s behavior in recent months. But if Turkey has turned into a Kafkaesque quagmire, a republic of dirty tricks and surreal conspiracies, it is G\u00fclenists who must shoulder much of the blame. This is worth remembering in view of the movement\u2019s efforts to dress up its current opposition to Erdo\u011fan in the garb of democracy and pluralism.<\/p>\n
G\u00fclenist commentators preach about the rule of law and human rights, even as G\u00fclenist media champion flagrant show trials. The movement showcases Fethullah G\u00fclen as a beacon of moderation and tolerance, while his Turkish-language Web site peddles his anti-Semitic, anti-Western sermons. Such double talk seems to have become second nature to G\u00fclenist leaders.<\/p>\n
The good news is that the rest of the world has started to see Erdo\u011fan\u2019s republic for what it is: an increasingly authoritarian regime built around a popular but deeply flawed leader. Indeed, his government\u2019s crackdown on dissent may well have cost Istanbul the 2020 Olympics. What has yet to be recognized is the separate, and quite disturbing, role that the G\u00fclen movement has played in bringing Turkey to its current impasse. As Americans and Europeans debate the G\u00fclen movement\u2019s role in their own societies, they should examine Turkey\u2019s experience more closely.<\/p>\n
Dani Rodrik, Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy.<\/em> by Guest Columnists By Dani Rodrik T\u00dcRKAN Saylan was a trailblazing physician, one of Turkey\u2019s first female dermatologists and a leading campaigner against leprosy. She was also a staunch secularist who established a foundation to provide scholarships to young girls so they could attend school. In 2009, police raided her house and confiscated documents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":76547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76546","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=76546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a9 Project Syndicate 1995\u20132013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"