Erdoganism is a new terminology introduced by the opinion writers against President Tayyib Erdogan who has launched a cleansing operation in the civil and military bureaucracy in the aftermath of July 15 abortive coup blamed on the US-based pro-Israel cleric, Fatehullah Gulen who is described by Pape Escobar as a CIA asset.
Tufail Ahmed, Director, of the Washington-based South Asia Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) says "Erdogan is a dictator, coup was Turkey's hope for democracy."
"Elections are just one pillar of democracy. However, terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and hidden jihadists like Erdogan have figured out that they can use elections as a means to acquire power and change the system" he went on to say.
"Erdogan seeks to revive the Ottoman Caliphate. For Erdoganism, Islam matters, not the people," Tufail said adding: Erdoganism is seen as Islamism.
Tufail sees Erdogan's massive purge in civil and military bureaucracy as advancing his the Islamist agenda. Erdogan has dismissed 2,745 judges including members of Turkey's highest judiciary board. He cancelled the licences of 21,000 private school teachers. Around 50,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and teachers have been suspended or removed. To expand the scope of Islamism after the failed coup, Erdogan ordered 1,577 deans of universities to resign, Tufail added.
To prove his point Tufail recalled that after Erdogan came to power, Turkey lifted rules banning women from wearing headscarves in the country's state institutions. In 2014, it permitted girls as young as ten to wear scarf in schools. Erdogan's policies are directed at transforming Turkey into a Sharia-compliant state. Erdogan declared that women cannot be equal to men, saying manual work is against the "delicate nature" of women. Like the Taliban, Erdogan objected to the use of the term "moderate Islam" noting: "Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not."
Surprsingly, Tufail is silent about the Gulen movement which has been accused of master minding the failed coup. According to Al-Monitor columnist, Mustafa Akyol, the Gulenists have indeed created a parallel state within the state.
Mustafa Akyol says that the infiltration of state institutions -- especially strategic ones such as the police, the judiciary and the military -- by the Gulen community is a fact harped on by journalists for decades. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, the infiltration went even further, for Erdogan considered Fethullah Gulen a key ally.
He also said that not just the government, but also the chief of staff, the National Intelligence Organization, all major opposition parties, mainstream secular media, many anti-Erdogan journalists and most nongovernmental organizations seem to all agree that this coup was mainly a Gulenist operation, as a last-ditch effort to topple Erdogan, who had become the Gulenists' No. 1 enemy.
Gulen came to America in 1998, reportedly to seek medical treatment. Since then, he's directed his global empire from Pennsylvania. A federal judge granted him a green card in 2008.Shortly after he left for America, a series of secretly recorded sermons featuring Gulen aired on Turkish television. In one of them, he told his followers:
"You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers...You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it..."
"You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey " Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all in confidence. Know that when you leave here -- as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here."
In 2006, former police chief Adil Serdar Sacan estimated that the Fethullahcis held more than 80 percent of senior positions in the Turkish police force. "The assertion that the TNP (Turkish National Police) is controlled by Gulenists is impossible to confirm but we have found no one who disputes it," wrote James Jeffrey, the then US ambassador in Ankara, in a 2009 cable. [Dier Spiegel]
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said any country that stands by Fethullah Gulen will not be a friend of Turkey and will be considered at war with it.
Interestingly, almost two thirds of Turks believe Gulen was behind the coup attempt, according to a poll released on Tuesday. The Andy-Ar survey showed 64.4 percent of respondents believed Gulen was behind the coup attempt, while 3.8 percent blamed the United States, 3.6 percent foreign powers and 2.2 percent President Erdogan.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
