Erdogan did not calm down: Turkish authorities prolong state of emergency in the country
On Wednesday, the National Security Council of Turkey called for the extension of the state of emergency in the country. The Security Council believes that this will help restore the law and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens of the country. The state of emergency in Turkey introduced 20 July this year after a failed coup. The term of a special legal regime was determined to be three months. Now it is expiring, and in Ankara we are thinking about renewing it. AFP, which reported this, notes that the adoption of the relevant decision will now become a mere formality, because the president of the country Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired the meeting of the council, who initiated the state of emergency in Turkey.
Repressions in Turkey amaze with their scale
Simultaneously with the meeting of the National Security Council, the Turkish authorities informed the citizens about the results of the special legal regime. Serious repression unfolded in the country. As the Minister of Justice of Turkey Bekir Bozdag reported to 28 on September, after the failed coup, thousands of people were arrested by 32. About 100, thousands of military, government officials, officers, police officers and judges were dismissed or suspended from work. These include 7600 police officers and 300 gendarmes, 2300 university employees and more 1000 military personnel, judges and prosecutors. 70 has thousands of people under investigation.
The minister did not rule out new arrests, and already on Friday, Bekir Bozdag made a statement to the media that the police carried out raids in Turkey’s largest courts and prisons. As a result of these raids, thousands of Turkish prison staff have been suspended from work at 1,5. They are suspected of having links with Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of leading an attempted coup.
According to CNN Türk, on September 30, arrest warrants were issued to 87 court employees and 75 prison guards. The scale of repression is surprising. They are already becoming long-term. Turkish media say: in the next five years, the country plans to build 174 new prisons so that the number of prisoners can be increased from the current 200 thousand to 300 thousand people.
A state of emergency has not cooled the passions in the country. In August, a series of brutal attacks followed. In their organization, Turkish President Recep Erdogan also accused the preacher Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan called the attacks revenge for the suppression of the rebellion and with a new force began to repress supporters of Gulen.
Experts evaluate these actions of the Turkish president differently. Many believe that the coup allowed Erdogan to finally suppress Kemalist sentiment in the army. Since the time of Kemal Ataturk, the military has been the guarantor of the secularism of the state. Every time when religious preferences began to dominate politics, the generals took power into their own hands and firmly, sometimes, even bloodyly, returned the country's elite to the secular path.
In this century, Recep Erdogan managed to overcome this long-term trend. The Turkish legislation was amended, which deprived the military of the right to interfere in political processes. Moreover, the generals, who had previously carried out military coups, were prosecuted. Since then, many top military officials have lost not only power, but also freedom - have been sentenced to long prison terms.
Not everyone in the army agreed with the new order. After the failed coup, Erdogan had the opportunity to finally complete the purge in the ranks of the military. This version is supported by the fact that the main defendant of the Turkish authorities in the organization of the coup, Fethullah Gulen, does not enjoy support in the army. He himself was persecuted during military coups. The preacher Gulen, like President Erdogan, is in favor of strengthening the Islamic principle in politics. This for many years united them. Then a crack appeared in the relations of politicians, which eventually grew to the scale of open hostility.
Liberal Islam through Gülen Schools
Many consider Fethullah Gülen to be a preacher of liberal Islam. As former Turkish Foreign Minister Yashar Yakish recalls: “In the 1990s, Gulen, according to some sources, made a strategic decision. He told his followers that there are more mosques in Turkey than the population needs. Therefore, his movement should focus on the creation of schools. ”
The movement, which arose under the influence of the ideas of Fethullah Gülen, has no official name. Most often it is called "Hizmet" ("Service" - translated from Turkish). Researchers at this socio-political phenomenon claim that Gülen proposed a new modern view of Islam. According to the English magazine The Economist, "the concept of movement opposes the extremist orientation of Salafism." The ideas of pacifism, interfaith dialogue, the development of democracy and a multiparty system are not alien to him.
Most likely, the movement acquired these qualities in the process of its development, as it overstepped the borders of Turkey and came to countries with a different way of life, a different level of public relations and even a state structure. The idea of Fethullah Gülen - to give Muslim compatriots a versatile education, the opportunity to use the benefits of modern society, while complying with all the prescriptions of religion, received a vivid development outside of Turkey.
According to the calculations, the number of schools and other educational institutions opened by the Gülen movement in Turkey has passed the 300 mark, and over the world there are already more than a thousand in 120 countries. This is an exclusively pro-Turkish project. He received wide distribution in the post-Soviet space. Caught not everywhere.
In Uzbekistan, for example, the schools of Gulen were accused of promoting extremism. Schools were closed with a fell swoop, and teachers were deported from the country. The authorities of Turkmenistan did the same. These demarches, however, have other explanations. The Uzbek authorities thus protested against the policy of Ankara, which sheltered activists from the extremist party Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Ashgabat, in turn, attended to the preservation of a certain closeness of Turkmen society.
Probably, Turkmen were alerted by the experience of Kyrgyzstan, where the colleges and universities of Gulen became the basis of the education system. Their graduates now occupy up to 40 percent of places in state and municipal service. The national elite received a powerful pro-Turkish vaccine.
Something similar is happening in Kazakhstan. 30 Kazakh-Turkish lyceums have been working here for many years. They study nine thousand people. Over time, part of the Turkish teachers Astana replaced the local staff. However, the popularity of Gulen’s schools did not suffer from this. The high level of education in these schools raised their prestige so that the local elite now prefers to teach their children in the high schools of Gulen.
They exist not only in the states of central Asia, but also in the Russian Tatarstan, the Transcaucasus, even in the Ukrainian Kiev and Odessa. Turkish interests and a new religious culture are driven by Eurasian Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen.
How personal ambitions drove former allies
There are not so many differences between Gulen and Erdogan. Both of them recognize Islam not just as a religion, but as the dominant state ideology determining political processes in the country. Only Recep Erdogan made him also an instrument of struggle with the supporters of the secular development of the state, gave a certain nationalist coloring. The current repression and irreconcilable war with the Kurds is a concrete confirmation of this.
The ways of Erdogan and Gülen were not divided due to religious differences. Until the middle of the two thousandth, they actively cooperated. The intellectuals of the liberal preacher rendered Erdogan invaluable assistance in the struggle against the Turkish generals. For example, Gülen’s lawyers prepared compromising materials and processes that made it possible to carry out a serious purge in the ranks of the country's armed forces.
As is often the case with adults, the relationship between the preacher and the politician (at that time the country's prime minister) deteriorated on a personal basis. Gulen’s remarks on Erdogan’s ill-conceived actions provoked open irritation among the ambitious Turkish Prime Minister. So it was when Gulen condemned the direction of Erdogan to the Gaza Strip "Flotillas freedom ”, which led to the death of people. This happened when the preacher asked to dismiss several Turkish ministers, whom he directly accused of corruption.
It was about the supporters of Erdogan. The Prime Minister considered this interference in the sphere of his interests and even called Gülen's actions “hostile”. In response, Gulen showed that he was not only a preacher, but also ready for a serious confrontation. In the media controlled by Gulen, a thorough compromising material appeared, which for the first time showed large-scale corruption schemes for Recep Erdogan and his son Bilyal.
Between the former allies began an open war. Erdogan tried to close Gülen's educational institutions, but there was no money in the treasury to convert them into state ones. Then the Turkish authorities demanded the governments of friendly countries to close the schools of Gulen. The closest neighbors such as Azerbaijan, where Turkish schools were transferred to finance the oil company, responded.
The rest waited until the time for the coup. There is no choice left. The President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was invited to Turkey, promised to check the Turkish lyceums in the country, and if it turns out that they are under the control of Gulen’s supporters, they should replace the teachers there.
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev did not make such promises, but he reminded Erdogan of the sovereignty of his country. However, the invitation to visit Turkey Atambayev accepted. It is not clear what happened at the meeting of the two presidents. It is only known that after this rendezvous, Atambayev was urgently hospitalized with a severe heart attack to the Ankara clinic, and then transferred by special flight to Moscow Central Clinical Hospital for treatment.
But still the main irritant of Recep Erdogan remains the preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives from 1999, far beyond the ocean, in the US state of Pennsylvania. Turkish authorities accuse him of organizing the failed coup and demand extradition to Ankara.
On September 13, the Turkish Ministry of Justice sent a formal request to the US for the arrest of Fethullah Gulen. Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said that the refusal to extradite Gulen could affect US-Turkish relations. Recep Erdogan also expressed discontent with the United States. Speaking on Saturday at the opening ceremony of the autumn session of the parliament in Ankara, he noted: “We are witnessing how the United States pursues a two-faced policy in Syria. Part of the leadership of the United States is working with terrorists, and the other part is pursuing a policy that takes into account our concerns (in connection with the support of Syrian Kurds). I believe that the United States will soon bring our relations to the proper level. ”
Such harsh rhetoric shows that the Turks will continue to exert pressure on the Americans in order to achieve the issuance of Fethullah Gulen. For Erdogan, it is now extremely important to crush the resistance of the Islamic preacher and his supporters in order to further strengthen his personal power. Share it the president of Turkey is not ready.
The state of emergency for Erdogan is becoming a tool to achieve these goals. It is not known how long it will last. One thing is clear: instability in Turkey will affect the entire region and trade and economic relations with Russia as well.
Repressions in Turkey amaze with their scale
Simultaneously with the meeting of the National Security Council, the Turkish authorities informed the citizens about the results of the special legal regime. Serious repression unfolded in the country. As the Minister of Justice of Turkey Bekir Bozdag reported to 28 on September, after the failed coup, thousands of people were arrested by 32. About 100, thousands of military, government officials, officers, police officers and judges were dismissed or suspended from work. These include 7600 police officers and 300 gendarmes, 2300 university employees and more 1000 military personnel, judges and prosecutors. 70 has thousands of people under investigation.
The minister did not rule out new arrests, and already on Friday, Bekir Bozdag made a statement to the media that the police carried out raids in Turkey’s largest courts and prisons. As a result of these raids, thousands of Turkish prison staff have been suspended from work at 1,5. They are suspected of having links with Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of leading an attempted coup.
According to CNN Türk, on September 30, arrest warrants were issued to 87 court employees and 75 prison guards. The scale of repression is surprising. They are already becoming long-term. Turkish media say: in the next five years, the country plans to build 174 new prisons so that the number of prisoners can be increased from the current 200 thousand to 300 thousand people.
A state of emergency has not cooled the passions in the country. In August, a series of brutal attacks followed. In their organization, Turkish President Recep Erdogan also accused the preacher Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan called the attacks revenge for the suppression of the rebellion and with a new force began to repress supporters of Gulen.
Experts evaluate these actions of the Turkish president differently. Many believe that the coup allowed Erdogan to finally suppress Kemalist sentiment in the army. Since the time of Kemal Ataturk, the military has been the guarantor of the secularism of the state. Every time when religious preferences began to dominate politics, the generals took power into their own hands and firmly, sometimes, even bloodyly, returned the country's elite to the secular path.
In this century, Recep Erdogan managed to overcome this long-term trend. The Turkish legislation was amended, which deprived the military of the right to interfere in political processes. Moreover, the generals, who had previously carried out military coups, were prosecuted. Since then, many top military officials have lost not only power, but also freedom - have been sentenced to long prison terms.
Not everyone in the army agreed with the new order. After the failed coup, Erdogan had the opportunity to finally complete the purge in the ranks of the military. This version is supported by the fact that the main defendant of the Turkish authorities in the organization of the coup, Fethullah Gulen, does not enjoy support in the army. He himself was persecuted during military coups. The preacher Gulen, like President Erdogan, is in favor of strengthening the Islamic principle in politics. This for many years united them. Then a crack appeared in the relations of politicians, which eventually grew to the scale of open hostility.
Liberal Islam through Gülen Schools
Many consider Fethullah Gülen to be a preacher of liberal Islam. As former Turkish Foreign Minister Yashar Yakish recalls: “In the 1990s, Gulen, according to some sources, made a strategic decision. He told his followers that there are more mosques in Turkey than the population needs. Therefore, his movement should focus on the creation of schools. ”
The movement, which arose under the influence of the ideas of Fethullah Gülen, has no official name. Most often it is called "Hizmet" ("Service" - translated from Turkish). Researchers at this socio-political phenomenon claim that Gülen proposed a new modern view of Islam. According to the English magazine The Economist, "the concept of movement opposes the extremist orientation of Salafism." The ideas of pacifism, interfaith dialogue, the development of democracy and a multiparty system are not alien to him.
Most likely, the movement acquired these qualities in the process of its development, as it overstepped the borders of Turkey and came to countries with a different way of life, a different level of public relations and even a state structure. The idea of Fethullah Gülen - to give Muslim compatriots a versatile education, the opportunity to use the benefits of modern society, while complying with all the prescriptions of religion, received a vivid development outside of Turkey.
According to the calculations, the number of schools and other educational institutions opened by the Gülen movement in Turkey has passed the 300 mark, and over the world there are already more than a thousand in 120 countries. This is an exclusively pro-Turkish project. He received wide distribution in the post-Soviet space. Caught not everywhere.
In Uzbekistan, for example, the schools of Gulen were accused of promoting extremism. Schools were closed with a fell swoop, and teachers were deported from the country. The authorities of Turkmenistan did the same. These demarches, however, have other explanations. The Uzbek authorities thus protested against the policy of Ankara, which sheltered activists from the extremist party Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Ashgabat, in turn, attended to the preservation of a certain closeness of Turkmen society.
Probably, Turkmen were alerted by the experience of Kyrgyzstan, where the colleges and universities of Gulen became the basis of the education system. Their graduates now occupy up to 40 percent of places in state and municipal service. The national elite received a powerful pro-Turkish vaccine.
Something similar is happening in Kazakhstan. 30 Kazakh-Turkish lyceums have been working here for many years. They study nine thousand people. Over time, part of the Turkish teachers Astana replaced the local staff. However, the popularity of Gulen’s schools did not suffer from this. The high level of education in these schools raised their prestige so that the local elite now prefers to teach their children in the high schools of Gulen.
They exist not only in the states of central Asia, but also in the Russian Tatarstan, the Transcaucasus, even in the Ukrainian Kiev and Odessa. Turkish interests and a new religious culture are driven by Eurasian Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen.
How personal ambitions drove former allies
There are not so many differences between Gulen and Erdogan. Both of them recognize Islam not just as a religion, but as the dominant state ideology determining political processes in the country. Only Recep Erdogan made him also an instrument of struggle with the supporters of the secular development of the state, gave a certain nationalist coloring. The current repression and irreconcilable war with the Kurds is a concrete confirmation of this.
The ways of Erdogan and Gülen were not divided due to religious differences. Until the middle of the two thousandth, they actively cooperated. The intellectuals of the liberal preacher rendered Erdogan invaluable assistance in the struggle against the Turkish generals. For example, Gülen’s lawyers prepared compromising materials and processes that made it possible to carry out a serious purge in the ranks of the country's armed forces.
As is often the case with adults, the relationship between the preacher and the politician (at that time the country's prime minister) deteriorated on a personal basis. Gulen’s remarks on Erdogan’s ill-conceived actions provoked open irritation among the ambitious Turkish Prime Minister. So it was when Gulen condemned the direction of Erdogan to the Gaza Strip "Flotillas freedom ”, which led to the death of people. This happened when the preacher asked to dismiss several Turkish ministers, whom he directly accused of corruption.
It was about the supporters of Erdogan. The Prime Minister considered this interference in the sphere of his interests and even called Gülen's actions “hostile”. In response, Gulen showed that he was not only a preacher, but also ready for a serious confrontation. In the media controlled by Gulen, a thorough compromising material appeared, which for the first time showed large-scale corruption schemes for Recep Erdogan and his son Bilyal.
Between the former allies began an open war. Erdogan tried to close Gülen's educational institutions, but there was no money in the treasury to convert them into state ones. Then the Turkish authorities demanded the governments of friendly countries to close the schools of Gulen. The closest neighbors such as Azerbaijan, where Turkish schools were transferred to finance the oil company, responded.
The rest waited until the time for the coup. There is no choice left. The President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was invited to Turkey, promised to check the Turkish lyceums in the country, and if it turns out that they are under the control of Gulen’s supporters, they should replace the teachers there.
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev did not make such promises, but he reminded Erdogan of the sovereignty of his country. However, the invitation to visit Turkey Atambayev accepted. It is not clear what happened at the meeting of the two presidents. It is only known that after this rendezvous, Atambayev was urgently hospitalized with a severe heart attack to the Ankara clinic, and then transferred by special flight to Moscow Central Clinical Hospital for treatment.
But still the main irritant of Recep Erdogan remains the preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives from 1999, far beyond the ocean, in the US state of Pennsylvania. Turkish authorities accuse him of organizing the failed coup and demand extradition to Ankara.
On September 13, the Turkish Ministry of Justice sent a formal request to the US for the arrest of Fethullah Gulen. Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said that the refusal to extradite Gulen could affect US-Turkish relations. Recep Erdogan also expressed discontent with the United States. Speaking on Saturday at the opening ceremony of the autumn session of the parliament in Ankara, he noted: “We are witnessing how the United States pursues a two-faced policy in Syria. Part of the leadership of the United States is working with terrorists, and the other part is pursuing a policy that takes into account our concerns (in connection with the support of Syrian Kurds). I believe that the United States will soon bring our relations to the proper level. ”
Such harsh rhetoric shows that the Turks will continue to exert pressure on the Americans in order to achieve the issuance of Fethullah Gulen. For Erdogan, it is now extremely important to crush the resistance of the Islamic preacher and his supporters in order to further strengthen his personal power. Share it the president of Turkey is not ready.
The state of emergency for Erdogan is becoming a tool to achieve these goals. It is not known how long it will last. One thing is clear: instability in Turkey will affect the entire region and trade and economic relations with Russia as well.
Information