Ã?aÄ?aptay’s latest analysis: ill-informed, ill-intentioned
by Ä°HSAN YILMAZ
A piece titled `What’s Really Behind Turkey’s Coup Arrests?’ by Soner
Ã?aÄ?aptay, who works for the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near
East Policy (WINEP), was published very recently by the Foreign Policy
journal. He starts his unsubstantiated claims by saying that the Gülen
movement is a shadowy Islamist movement.
I have written here several times that unless you call every single
practicing Muslim an Islamist, Fethullah Gülen and his movement can
never be called Islamist. Quite the contrary, the movement has always
stayed away from politics. It is well known that if someone is called
Islamist, it is implied that he is not an ordinary Muslim but is
instead a radical and possibly a pro-violence one. Some hooligan
right-wing Islamophobic tabloid journalist could write such a thing,
but an academic such as Ã?aÄ?aptay must know that serious academics
never call the Gülen movement Islamist. Even this misuse of the term
shows that Ã?aÄ?aptay is not objective or unbiased toward the movement.
Ã?aÄ?aptay tries to dilute evidence against the coup attempts and
writes: `When I asked a former US ambassador to Turkey for his views
on the news, he thought the scenario was ridiculous. `If the Turkish
military was going to do a coup, they would not be writing a
5,000-page memo about it,’ he stated.’ But on Friday the military
prosecutor confirmed that experts agreed that the coup documents were
authentic. I am sure the experts know this better than a former
ambassador who only relies on speculation. What is more, we know that
the coup-plotter generals say in the recording that they themselves
recorded and archived that the plan they imitated was the Flag
(Bayrak) Plan which was a written document prepared to plan Sept. 12,
1980. The fact that the plan is longer this time is only a sign that
coup-plotting junta knew that this time civil society is much stronger
thanks to the Gülen movement and many others, so the plan had to be
more detailed, careful and vigilant. They recorded everything, and one
reason could be that they did not trust each other. On March 9, 1971,
some generals betrayed their colleagues and the leftist (Baathist, to
be more accurate) coup and sided with the rightist generals who
successfully staged a coup on March 12, 1971, and the next generation
of coup-lover generals never forgot this.
The fact that no one has been prosecuted for the wiretap of the chief
of General Staff is interpreted by Ã?aÄ?aptay as a sign that the balance
of power in Turkey has shifted decisively. Bu he never mentions that
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an himself and several other Justice
and Development Party (AK Party) deputies also were wiretapped and
that Ergenekon suspect DoÄ?u Perinçek’s newspapers and TV stations
published them. They were not prosecuted, either. Ã?aÄ?aptay prefers to
give us half the picture, as he has done many times before, for
instance, when he was arguing that Turkey was changing its axis from a
Western-alliance position to pro-Iranian, etc., position. This was
repeatedly and vehemently denied by the US State Department, EU
politicians and Eurocrats. Not surprisingly, only rightist Israelis,
Likudniks, Zionists and some neocons advocate these views, which are
not based on evidence and facts but on pure conspiracy or speculation.
It has repeatedly been shown by academics that the main engine behind
the success of the AK Party, the Anatolian middle classes and the
nascent elite, are fully supportive of the EU process and that is why
they support the AK Party. Otherwise they would support Necmettin
Erbakan’s Felicity Party (SP), which has an anti-West and anti-EU
discourse.
Speculation and accusations
Ã?aÄ?aptay tries again to blacken the Gülen movement by labeling it an
`ultraconservative political faction.’ What is conservative? What is
ultraconservative? Why is it political and why is it a faction?
Ã?aÄ?aptay simply borrowed all the negative words and terms that would
irritate the Western reader, but none of these are true, and clear
definitions are never given. Again, he writes that the movement aims
to `reshape secular Turkey in its own image, by securing the supremacy
of Gülen’s version of religion over politics, government, education,
media, business, and public and personal life.’ But these are pure
blanket accusations, mind-reading and pure speculation without a shred
of evidence.
He also claims that `today, it is those who criticize the Gülen
movement who get burned.’ It seems that Ã?aÄ?aptay never reads Turkish
newspapers and never watches Turkish television. The lies and
accusations that Ã?aÄ?aptay is fabricating here are not original
whatsoever. Every day on television and in newspapers several
pro-oligarchy journalists, so-called writers, academics and so on keep
repeating these conspiracy theories. Nothing happens to these people.
In the past, Gülen always sued them and got compensation for libel
(the pro-Ergenekon daily Cumhuriyet’s archive is full of papers with
corrections, even in the headlines), but as far as I can see, Gülen is
no longer interested in them; maybe he does not want to make those
marginal voices happy and famous.
Ã?aÄ?aptay states that `Zekeriya Ã-z, the chief prosecutor leading the
Ergenekon case, and Ramazan Akyurek, the head of the police’s domestic
intelligence branch, as well as other powerful people in the police,
are thought by some to be Gülen sympathizers.’ Everybody who is
anti-oligarchy or not corrupt is thought to be a Gülen sympathizer.
What can Ã?aÄ?aptay say if I write here that Ã?aÄ?aptay is thought to be a
Mossad agent by some as he always writes along the lines of the
pro-Israelis, and what is more he works for an openly pro-Israeli
think tank? Writing this here seriously would be ridiculous, but this
is what so-called academic Ã?aÄ?aptay does when it comes to police
officers and prosecutors without — again — any shred of evidence.
Ã?aÄ?aptay portrays Türkan Saylan as just a grandmother; he never
mentions that she could not explain a document discovered on her
computer mentioning encouraging girls (who were given scholarships by
Saylan) to make every sacrifice needed to become close to young
officers. Several other original documents that were filed by the
prosecutors also show similar activities.
No proof of evidence
Ã?aÄ?aptay writes without any proof or evidence that `the
Gülen-controlled parts of the judiciary and police have also wielded
illegal wiretaps against those entangled in the Ergenekon case,
leaking intimate details of their private lives.’ But is it a
coincidence that several Ergenekon suspects were caught with those
recordings and pictures and sometimes they were caught not by the
police but by the gendarmerie? Remember when former Land Forces
Commander Gen. YaÅ?ar Büyükanıt was to be appointed the chief of
General Staff; there was a bombardment of every single cell phone,
e-mail inbox and Internet Web site accusing him of being everything
from a secret Jew to a corrupt officer and so on. The oligarchy’s men
instantly blamed their scapegoat Gülen at that time, but afterwards
all these materials were found in the office of Büyükanıt’s rival for
the position of chief of General Staff, Gen. Å?ener Eruygur (an
Ergenekon suspect ), well protected in the army compounds. Gen.
Eruygur today claims that he cannot remember anything. What is more,
referring to this, Gen. Büyükanıt himself said he was also a victim of
Ergenekon. One wonders why Ã?aÄ?aptay never mentions these important
factual details but instead talks about rumors and repeats exactly
what the Ergenekon suspects keep saying.
Ã?aÄ?aptay also claims that `the military ¦ opposes the AKP and the
Gülenists because it sees itself as the virtual guardian of Turkey’s
secular polity à la Atatürk’s vision, serving as a bulwark against
religion’s domination over politics and government.’ But why does
Ã?aÄ?aptay not look at the EU progress reports on Turkey that totally
discredit his claims and ask for a more transparent,
democracy-friendly and accountable army? Why do EU officials always
reiterate that the Ergenekon case gives them hope for the future of
Turkish democracy? It seems that everybody in the EU has become Gülen
sympathizers! It seems that they are not as intelligent as Ã?aÄ?aptay!
Ã?aÄ?aptay also allegedly writes that Gülen said `to his followers in a
message broadcast on Turkish TV in 1999 that `every method and path is
acceptable [including] lying to people’.’ Even in the doctored video
that Ã?aÄ?aptay mentions (he never says that it was broadcast to accuse
Gülen but gives the impression that it was Gülen who broadcast this
message), he never said this. Also, a staunchly secularist prosecutor
prepared an indictment against Gülen based on this doctored video
recording, and the Feb. 28 coup’s mighty generals openly supported
him, but the courts, including the highest court, the Court of
Cassation, found Gülen not guilty, as Ã?aÄ?aptay mentions only briefly.
A Gülen-Erbakan alliance?
He claims that the Islamist Welfare Party (RP) government was
supported by the Gülen movement. I am sorry, but this is a very silly
lie. It is known by everyone in Turkey that Gülen and Erbakan do not
like each other. Gülen never supported Erbakan. Ã?aÄ?aptay seems to be
ignorant of Turkish social and political history. Gülen always said
that mixing religion with politics is a satanic act. There are
countless documents, evidence and academic studies to show this.
Diametrically opposed to what Ã?aÄ?aptay writes, Gülen did something
very `unGülenic’ and appeared on TV at the time and stated very
powerfully that Erbakan should quit the government because the
situation was extremely tense and he feared a coup that would end with
bloodshed. It is easy to find newspaper pieces, comments on this and
even the recording of the broadcast itself. Can Ã?aÄ?aptay show us even
a single piece proving that Gülen supported Erbakan for one moment in
his entire life? What actually happened was that after getting rid of
the Islamic government, the anti-Islam coup went after all religious
people, banned the headscarf at universities, banned parents sending
under 15-year-olds to mosques in the summer holidays to receive
religious education, tried to bankrupt religious businessmen and so
on. Today, almost everyone remembers those days with a feeling of
total disgust, and no one advocates what happened. Did you also know
that the coup’s leader, Gen. Cevik Bir, said publicly that the AK
Party was beneficial for the country?
Ã?aÄ?aptay also claims that `the AKP ¦ is largely a reincarnation of the
banned RP,’ but there is no evidence to support this. Erbakan went on
to establish his own party, and he accuses ErdoÄ?an and his friends of
being children of the Byzantine Empire and sheepish slaves of the
West. Ã?aÄ?aptay and his friends can never explain why the Armenians in
Turkey reportedly (as declared by the Armenian patriarch and some
Armenian journalists such as Etyen Mahçupyan, who is also a Taraf
columnist) voted for the AK Party in the July 22, 2007 general
elections, when the AK Party got 47 percent of the vote. Is it again a
case of those people not being as intelligent as Ã?aÄ?aptay? I must note
that I submitted a paper on the AK Party and its non-Islamism to a
respected journal, and one of the reviewers was upset by the
information on the pro-AK Party Armenian voting and did not hide his
feelings, saying that this information was irrelevant. I wonder why?
Ã?aÄ?aptay is himself solid proof that the conspiracy theories he
repeats about the Gülen movement are based on fabrications and lies,
blanket accusations without any evidence, mind reading and disrespect
for the judicial process in Turkey. These desperate attacks on the
movement by Ã?aÄ?aptay, Michael Rubin, Rachel Sharon-Krespin, Barry
Rubin and so on, will only strengthen the movement’s respected
peaceful and pro-dialogue status all over the world.
Believe me, if he had any evidence against the Gülen movement, instead
of humiliating himself once more and abusing Foreign Policy and its
readers, Ã?aÄ?aptay would not hide it from his readers, unless he is
also a secret Gülen sympathizer sacrificing himself and his academic
career by way of strange tactics.
I did not write this piece because I take Ã?aÄ?aptay and his friends
seriously. I do not. Google the net, and you will find thousands of
conspiracy theories about Gülen (by the way, none of their writers got
burned) on marginal anti-Islamic or ultra-nationalist Web sites. But I
take Foreign Policy seriously, and I am sure they will tackle this
abhorrent abuse of their good intentions.
26 February 2010, Friday
Ä°HSAN YILMAZ