e GülenMediaEmpireThe Monographs of Arab Media Report

Edited by

Lea Nocera

The Monographs of Arab Media Report

Arab Media Report is a project promoted by Reset-Dialogues onCivilizations, the international organisation for dialogue betweencultures. It was created to develop a greater knowledge in Italy, ofmedia in Arab countries and countries with a Muslim majority (Iranand Turkey).Breaking linguistic barrier and making them directly accessible tothe public, Arab Media Report analyses media that are shaping thenew cultural, political and social horizon of the Mediterranean areaand the Middle East. Constantly monitoring contemporary mediadevelopments, Arab Media Report focuses on the press, televisionand social networks. It analyses programming of large pan-Arabnetworks, as well as those of local channels through newscasts, po-litical debates, soaps and reality shows.Directed by Giancarlo Bosetti, Arab Media Report employs Az-zurra Meringolo’s coordination alongside a network of regionalcollaborators, consenting an exhaustive view of the media land-scape.Aside from articles and analyses frequently published on the web,Arab Media Report launched a series of monographs in 2013.Their aim: to further develop relevant contemporary themes in themedia world.

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e Gülen Media Empire

Edited byLea Nocera

With the contribution of Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs andInternational Cooperation

N. 8, september 2015

Editing: Odetta PizzingrilliScientific Coordinator: Azzurra Meringolo

Publisher Reset S.r.l. – Via San Telesforo 10 Rome

7 IntroductionLea Nocera

23 Corrupted Speech:The Movement, the Party,and theBreakdownof the New TurkeyJoshua Hendrick

43 e conflict between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Fethul-lan Gülen in terms of its various dimensions and moti-vationsRuşen Çakır - Semih Sakallı

61 An Old Friend, A New Enemy: The Fratricidal Strug-gle between R.T. Erdoğan and the the Gülen MediaGroupRagıp Duran

77 Shifting the community press: a brief examination ofGülen-affiliated papers Zaman and Today’s ZamanJoshua Carney

93 Representing Islam: Cinematographic Productions ofthe Gülen Movement Fabio Vicini

103 The Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) Maria Concetta Tedesco

111 Bibliography115 Authors

Table of contents

Thirty arrests, among them five journalists and ninetelevision series scriptwriters, directors and producers,marked the end of 2014 in Turkey. It was a year dur-ing which attacks continued on the press, especiallymedia linked to the movement led by FethullahGülen, a man unquestionably in conflict with RecepTayyip Erdoğan. Characterised by an interpretation ofIslam in line with the times, albeit respecting tradi-tion, capable of keeping up with technology, moder-nity and globalisation as well as using it, the transna-tional movement led by Gülen or Cemaat – as it iscalled in Turkish – is equipped with an organizationthat is multifaceted and widespread at an internationallevel with its own schools, media, banks, financial andtrade organizations, as well as support and influencenetworks also at a political and state level. For manyyears Gülen’s movement had entertained excellent re-lations with the Turkish government and its diplomat-ic service, presenting and supporting the elements atthe core of the Turkish model in which national tem-perament and religious values are merged and thatduring the 21st century had progressively affirmed it-self abroad. Through its vast network of schools and

Introduction

Lea Nocera

cultural institutes, and based on humanitarian and re-ligious motivations dictated by interreligious dialogue,it has contributed to the consolidation of Turkey’s softpower practices in many areas, well beyond the bor-ders of the Middle East and increasingly gaining pres-tige and popularity.1 These arrests, firstly involving theeditor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Zaman, EkremDumanlı, and the president of the television channelSamanyolu, Hidayet Karaca, clearly revealed the riftthat had developed between the government and theGülen movement.

The matter had been debated for a year in Turkey, eversince the emergence of the corruption scandal in Decem-ber 2013, with then-prime minister Erdoğan’s attacks be-coming increasingly frequent and harsh on the Gülenmovement, accused of having formed a state within thestate. It was therefore no coincidence that the media wastargeted, as in the cases involving Zaman which with itsover one million copies a day is the most read newspaperin Turkey, its English version Today’s Zaman and othermedia known to be linked to Gülen through the mediagroup Feza, or Samanyolu, which for some time hadbeen harshly criticising the government. The journalistswere charged with having formed a terrorist organizationwith the objective of assuming control of the Turkishstate by applying pressure, using intimidation andthreats. A few days later, a number of them, among themZaman’s editor-in-chief, were supposedly released due to

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1 On the Turkish model and soft power practices see the monographby Joshua Carney, Marwan M. Kraidy, Lea Nocera, Stefano M. Torelli.(by), entitled “The Turkish Touch. Neo-ottoman Hegemony and Turk-ish Television in the Middle East”, Rome: Arab Media Report, 2014downloadable at http://arabmediareport.it/the-turkish-touch-egemo-nia-neo-ottomana-e-televisione-turca-in-medio-oriente/#

a lack of evidence, and yet, in the meantime, there hadbeen a show of strength.

The wave of arrests certainly appeared to be a new at-tack on freedom of the press and speech, and as such wasto spark many protests in Turkey and abroad, not onlyamong journalists but also in civil society and in politicalcircles.2 In this case, however, there had not only beenthe government’s attack on a newspaper – or a mediagroup – that had criticised it, but a political clash thathad developed internally and then emerged and was am-plified, thanks to the resonance of media belonging todifferent factions, linked either to the government or toGülen’s movement. The already distorted and complexrelations between politics and the media in Turkey re-vealed new aspects worth investigating, the first signs ofwhich had already been seen at least a year earlier duringthe Gezi Park protests.

At the end of May 2013, a few days after the begin-ning of protests in Istanbul that were to spark a series ofdemonstrations that lasted months, criticism addressedat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the repression of protestsin the columns of the daily newspaper Zaman, alreadyknown at the time for being close to the government,caused quite a significant degree of surprise. During thefirst days of demonstrations, in what turned out to be afailed attempt to contain or conceal the news to effec-

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2 On this subject see: Emanuela Pergolizzi, “La stampa turca com-menta la stretta di Erdoğan ai media”, Arab Media Report, 21 December2014, http://arabmediareport.it/la-stampa-turca-commenta-la-stretta-di-erdogan-ai-media/ and Elisa Gianni, “Dittatura, complotti e ram-marico. Oped turchi sulla stretta di Erdoğan ai media”, Arab MediaReport, 17 December 2014, http://arabmediareport.it/commenti-tur-chia-arresti-giornalisti/

tively invalidate those events, most daily newspapers andtelevision channels did not report what was taking place.In addition to the lack of news in the media, pressurewas applied on journalists, which often resulted in threatsor dismissals. There was no lack of protest from thedemonstrators themselves who organized sit-ins outsidethe headquarters of a number of television stations(CNN, Habertürk) or daily newspapers, such as Sabah.Control exercised by the government and by groups closeto it over the media and news outlets, however, did notaffect social networks – considered dangerous followingthese events and felt to have strong subversive potential– nor did it involve a few small independent channels.In this context, the position assumed by Zaman, thenewspaper with a daily circulation of over one millioncopies, was rather remarkable. The newspaper is a well-known source of information. At the time its support forthe party in power in Turkey since 2002, the Justice andDevelopment Party (AKP) founded by Erdoğan and Ab-dullah Gül, respectively current former presidents of therepublic, was common knowledge.

The surge of support for the protesters turned out tobe rather short-lived. In the weeks that followed, in spiteof the fact that a number of commentators continuednow and again to report facts from a different perspec-tive, the newspaper’s attitude as far as the protesters wereconcerned, soon aligned itself to that of other publica-tions. All this in spite of the fact that its English edition,Today’s Zaman, aimed at a different and mainly foreignaudience, continued to express criticism of the harsh wayin which the government chose to react to the protests.This at last gave rise to serious doubts concerning the so-

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lidity of the political alliance between the governmentand Gülen’s movement.3

What was certain was that this was not the first timethat friction had been revealed between these two parties,but, generally speaking, until then there had not beentalk of a rift or a conflict, but rather of structural internaladjustments. At a later date, other issues and events wereto clearly reveal a deeper rift. The first indication involvedgovernment plans presented and approved in November2013 closing the dershane, private schools used to preparestudents sitting university admission exams. The mostferocious criticism expressed against this draft law wasimmediately raised by the Fethullah Gülen movement,reactions once again reported with great emphasis by thedaily newspaper Zaman. The dershane were in fact oneof the movement’s most important organizations inTurkey – with control over about 3,500 of these schools– both from a financial point of view and as a place ofpropaganda and proselytism. The government’s plans toclose these schools was perceived as a direct attack on themovement, and therefore in a certain sense as a declara-tion of war. Soon after, on December 17th, 2013, a vastanti-corruption police operation involved importantmembers of the government as well as entrepreneursclose to it. This was perceived as retaliation by the GülenMovement, the widespread presence of which in the po-lice force was now well-known. This was now an openconflict and one fought with statements, headlines and

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3 On this subject, on July 10th 2013, the editorialist Mücahit Özdoğanpublished an article in the online daily Radikal entitled “Today’s Zaman’sattitude regards to Gezi Park and new political reconfiguration”(“Today’s Zaman’ın Gezi Parkı’ndaki tutumu ve yeni siyaset tasarımı”).

media reports, but not only. The police operation, result-ing in an immense corruption scandal followed by anumber of protests, was accompanied by quick govern-ment intervention initially involving a cabinet reshuffleand immediately followed by renewed control over policeforces and the manner in which they were run. Duringthe weeks that followed the scandal, many officials weretransferred or moved to new positions and hundreds ofpolice officers all over the country were dismissed. Simul-taneously, one saw further re organization of administra-tive staff in other state apparatuses, such as the Ministryfor Education. Many believed this was a purge aimed atobstructing, if not totally blocking, any eventual new ar-rests that could have also directly threatened the premier’sown family. For Erdoğan, at the time prime minister, thissimply meant averting a plot with “international ramifi-cations” organized to ensure the fall of his governmentand endangering national security. This reference wasclearly aimed at the Gülen Movement, the leader ofwhich has been in voluntary exile in the United Statessince 1999. The movement, also called Cemaat or Hizmet(service), has been accused of creating a “parallel state”,of having organized the anti-corruption operation and,thanks to its infiltrating the police, enacted thousands ofillegal wire-taps in order to keep in check the govern-ment’s most important representatives.

In truth, the well-structured presence of people affili-ated with this movement, or close to it, in state institu-tions and the corridors of power – the judiciary, police,political and media world – had thus far been no mystery.Years earlier, a number of journalists such as Nedim Şenerand Ahmet Şık had already reported the Gülen Move-

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ment’s infiltration of state bureaucracy and, although notaccused directly because of their investigations, werecharged and arrested. When he was arrested, Ahmet Şık,in particular, had been working on his investigative book,which was blocked even before going to print, a bookentitled İmamın Ordusu (“The Imam’s Army) and was allabout the Gülen Movement, its origins, mechanisms andinfiltration strategies for bureaucracy and the state police.The arrest of this journalist, and others such as NedimŞener, took place within the framework of the Ergenekoninvestigation, a high-profile operation started in 2008 in-volving the most senior military ranks as well as journal-ists and intellectuals, all accused of being members of aclandestine organization aimed at overthrowing the AKPgovernment, as early as in 2002, following its first elec-toral victory. The journalists instead said that the reasonfor their arrest was to be found in their investigative re-porting on the Gülen Movement, at the time a strongally of the government and with far-reaching power sostrong it could manipulate any possible judicial case,ranging from police arrests to prosecutors’ investigations,to media coverage. Effectively, they denounced the “statewithin the state” or “parallel state” that Erdoğan himselfwas later to steadfastly identify with the Gülen Move-ment accusing it of conspiracy. However, even before theconflict between Gülen and the AKP ignited and becameinflamed, the alliance seemed necessary in order to rede-fine power in Turkey, in particular a reduction of thearmy’s power. Thus the two great investigations that hadcharacterised recent years in Turkish political life and jus-tice, operations Ergenekon and Balyoz (“hammer”), ledto the arrest – and more recently the release – of heads

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of the army, and many other officers known also for theiropposition to the AKP. The Turkish Army’s old guardfound itself effectively behind bars while, in the mean-time, the government established the conditions for moredirect control over the military, intervening for examplein the appointment of the Supreme Council of theArmed Forces (Yüksek Askeri Şura, YAŞ).4 In this processthe Gülen Movement seemed to provide the necessarysupport, especially through the judges and prosecutorsfollowing and continuing investigations. These two in-vestigations, particularly complicated and characterisedby numerous contradictions and conflicting criminalcases, had often been observed with suspicion by analysts.Parliamentary opposition, the People’s Republican Party(Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), judged these investiga-tions as being part of a broader strategy aimed at intim-idating secular environments and legitimising the AKP’sdomination. The government, on the other hand, hadalways rejected these allegations; at least until the corrup-tion scandal broke. Only a few days after December 17th,2013, the AKP Member of Parliament Yalçin Adoğan re-vealed from the pages of the daily newspaper Star thatthe accusations involving a plot against the army mayhave been the consequence of attacks organized by pros-ecutors close to Gülen. In the following days the army’sGeneral Staff was to request the opening of an investiga-tion, reporting suspicious links between the prosecutors

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4 It was in 2010 that for the first time the government effectively ap-pointed the most important members of the Armed Forces, preventingthe promotion of generals involved in the Ergenekon case. On a numberof occasions, the then Prime Minister Erdoğan presided over the meet-ings of the Superior Council of the Armed Forces.

and Fethullah Gülen.5 Far more recently, the Balyoz caseended with the acquittal of all the 236 people under in-vestigation, while previously may of those charged in theErgenekon enquiry had already been released. This is anoutcome that can only be linked to the vicissitudes of re-lations between the AKP and Fethullah Gülen, whichhave increasingly deteriorated over the course of the pastyear. Not long before the August 2014 presidential elec-tions that saw Erdoğan elected President of the Republic,a new wave of arrests involved the police. In the mean-time, the government had already adopted a series of leg-islative modifications in order to change the organizationof the judicial system and in particular of the SupremeBoard of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) in an attemptto strengthen its control also over magistrates.6 Finally,in February 2015 an arrest warrant was issued for Fethul-lah Gülen, accused of being the leader of the so-called“parallel state.”

The anti-corruption scandal therefore sparked a no-holds-barred battle between on the one hand Erdoğanand his party, the AKP, and on the other Fethullah Gülenand the Cemaat. In this attack launched by the govern-ment against the Gülen movement, what appears mostevident is the denunciation of the political involvementof judges, prosecutors and journalists belonging to themovement that, in spite of having earlier contributed to

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5 On the release of people sentenced for the Balyoz affair see: MarcouJean, “Les 230 condamnés de l ’affaire Balyoz sont libérés”, Ovipot, June 20th,2014, http://ovipot.hypotheses.org/10311.

6 Judicial reform approved by the government in February 2014, wasrevised by the Turkish Constitutional Court which considered parts ofthe reform as anti-constitutional since they did not respect the auton-omy of powers. This did not prevent the government seriously influ-encing matters when the Turkish HSYK was renewed last October.

the AKP’s success, later appeared to no longer be con-trolled by the government and to have effectively turnedagainst it.

In this political conflict the media has played a fun-damental role, within a reporting scenario that in Turkeyhas progressively become restricted and polarised. Whilein general the continuous readjustment of the balance ofpower – first between the government and the army, thenbetween the AKP and the Gülen Movement – has effec-tively resulted in the country returning to the authori-tarian system reported by many, and for the media it hasresulted in a constant attack on journalists and mediaoutlets. Over recent years, many journalists have beendismissed or arrested, while social networks have oftenbeen blocked, Twitter in particular. At the same time,daily newspapers such as the liberal Radikal owned bythe Doğan group, are no longer on sale at newsstands butonly available online, others such as the historic and sec-ular Hürriyet, owned by the same group, has been threat-ened with closure by the government. There are anumber of newspapers and, more broadly speaking,media outlets, considered to be pro-government, but thenumber of those linked to Gülen’s movement is still sig-nificant. It is therefore no coincidence that last Decem-ber, as said earlier, a year after the corruption scandal, thedaily newspaper Zaman and the television channelSamanyolu, both close to the Cemaat, were targeted in ajudicial case that led not only to arrests but also to theoffices of news outlets being searched. In the meantime,a new daily newspaper has appeared in Turkey with gov-ernment approval, the Vahdet, a newspaper whose nameof Arab origin means ‘unity’ and whose spiritual guide is

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Ahmet Mahmud Ünlü (known as Ahmet Hoca), a ratherdebatable figure linked to the brotherhood led by İsmaïlAğa, situated in Istanbul’s Çarsamba district.7 As Jean-François Pérouse has observed, the new newspaper, rathersimilar to the nationalist paper Akit, does not seem tohave brought much that is new to the Turkish publishingscene and yet, in addition to proving the government’sconstant attempts to influence information, it bears wit-ness to the new alliances the AKP is once again forgingfollowing the rift with the Gülen movement.8 These arealliances that once again refer to groups moving withinthe complicated and rather diversified galaxy of TurkishIslam.

What generally appears more interesting in the con-flict between Gülen’s movement and the AKP is the man-ner in which this battle takes place within a rift in today’sTurkish conservative political religious world. It consistsof a continuous readjustment of power in which politicsand Islam confront one another within the context of acomplex national history, a secular tradition, a strong andpersistent form of nationalism, a desire for change andrenewed religious fervour. In Turkey, Islam is not a newphenomenon nor is resorting to religion for political ob-jectives. There is no doubt that over the past decade, withthe AKP party’s success deriving from openly Islamic for-mations, but not defining itself as a conservative demo-cratic party, the presence of Islam and a vast collection

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7 Brian Chauvel, “Vahdet, une unification sous le signe de la différence?”, Dipnot, 10.04.2015

http://dipnot.hypotheses.org/1054. 8 Jean-François Pérouse, “Un nouveau venu sans surprise dans la presse

turque: le quotidien Vahdet”, Ovipot, 24.03.2015 http://ovipot.hypo-theses.org/10998#footnote_4_10998.

of symbols and discourses have achieved more weight onthe political stage. It is a complex and composite phe-nomenon, one closely linked to strategies involving theaffirmation of political power and in some ways attempt-ing to answer and ride the wave of a search for religiositythat is being experienced in contemporary societies.

The tie between political, economic, financial and re-ligious circles and the existence of religious groups accus-tomed to having to deal with and confront a secular andmilitary tradition that has obliged them to come up withstrategies and formulas, are the characteristics of so-called“Turkish-Islamic exceptionalism” as it has been definedby the scholar Şerif Mardin.9 Gülen’s movement and theAKP are two significant examples of this and their battlefor power leads one to reflect not only on the links be-tween Islam and politics, but also on the political projectitself – and the vision of society – of organizations andgroups inspired by religious values, produced within aform of conservativism that is still rising.

For the moment, in Italy there are no studies or in-depth analyses on Fethullah Gülen and his movement.This book therefore provides, for the first time in Italy, aframework of analysis of Cemaat and the role and im-portance it attributes to the media and to communica-tions. “Fethullah Gülen’s media empire” examines theGülen movement and its relationship with the media(TV, the press, films), the use the movement makes ofthe media in propaganda for its ideology and its religiousand political message as well as in creating its image both

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9 Mardin, Şerif. 2005. “Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterdayand Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in OperationalCodes”, Turkish Studies 6, (2), Summer 2005, 145-165.

within the movement and externally. Particular relevancehas been attributed to the conflict between the move-ment and the party in government – as previously men-tioned – and to how this conflict developed in the mediasector. This choice was dictated by a wish to providegreater elements in understanding the most recent polit-ical developments in contemporary Turkey. Studying theGülen Movement is no easy task. As also emphasised byDavid Titterson, the author of a recent essay on the sub-ject, it is a “difficult subject” because most of the materialand studies available are the work of authors close to orsupporting the movement and are often based on thewritings or statements of its leader.10 This movement infact promotes the publication of books and initiativesthat spread knowledge about it at an international level,in different circles and not necessarily in an unambiguousmanner.11

The papers published in this book are the work of au-thors who have for some time been studying Turkey,Turkish Islam and in some cases Gülen’s movement. Thebook begins with an essay by Joshua Hendrick entitled“The corrupted word; the Movement, the Party and thefailure of ‘new Turkey’” providing a description of theCemaat, its alliance with the AKP including the rift be-tween them, with a reflection on relations between stateand media in Turkey. The author provides a number ofelements that help one understand how the movementworks, dwelling on the different ramifications it has in

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10 Tittensor, David. 2014. The House of Service : the Gülen Movementand Islam’s Third Way, Oxford; Oxford University Press, 3.

11 As far as initiatives are concerned it is sufficient to consider themany international conferences dedicated to this movement:http://www.fethullahGülenconference.org.

Turkish society’s various sectors as well as at an interna-tional level. This is a first important contribution con-taining key elements for understanding the in-depthanalyses that follow. The second paper entitled “The con-flict between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Fethullan Gülenin its various dimensions and motivations,” written byRuşen Çakır and Semih Sakallı, authors of a recent bookon relations between the AKP and Gülen published inTurkey, addresses the various events and the reasons atthe root of this conflict. A great expert on Turkish polit-ical Islam, which he was one of the first to study, RuşenÇakır, together with Sakallı, helps readers identify boththe main factors associating the AKP and the GülenMovement, and the different approach used by them toaddress important issues in Turkish politics, such as for-eign policy or the Kurdish issue.

The two papers that follow analyse in depth in a morespecific manner the media galaxy supporting the move-ment. The essay entitled “Gülen’s media in a fratricidalbattle” by Ragıp Duran, a famous Turkish journalist andan expert in the media, presents a historical reconstruc-tion of a number of significant moments in the move-ment’s history, and studies in greater depth theimportance this movement attributes to the media andthe circulation of news. Thanks to this paper it is possibleto better understand the control exercised by the mediaor the repositioning of newspapers. Joshua Carney, in-stead, in his paper “Change of direction. A brief analysisof two newspapers associated to Gülen, Zaman andToday’s Zaman” focuses attention on the movement’s twomain newspapers, one published in Turkish and the otherin English. Analysing the different editorial choices on

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the basis of the readers the newspapers are targeting inTurkey and abroad, the author, a scholar of the Turkishmedia, allows one to assess how the movement is able todevelop multiple strategies in order to obtain greater con-sensus in different environments.

The last two contributions, albeit remaining withinthe framework of a study of Fethullah Gülen’s media, ad-dress two specific cases. In “Portraying Islam; FethullahGülen movement’s film productions”, Fabio Vicini, anexpert on Turkish Islam, focuses his analysis on two filmsproduced by the Cemaat with the intention of spreadingits own ideological message. As the author underlines,these two productions effectively allow one to explorehow the movement perceives itself and portrays itself,suggesting a more general reflection about the conceptof the portrayal of Islam (temsiliyet). Lastly, Maria Con-cetta Tedesco analyses “The Foundation of Journalistsand Authors (GYV)”, an organization that acts as themovement’s mouthpiece. A look at its organization andfunctioning allows one to perceive not only the impor-tance the media has for this movement and the role as-signed to journalists in searching for propagandaopportunities, but also to understand the subjects it con-centrates on and on which it bases its own discourse, suchas interreligious and intercultural dialogue, women, andrelations with central Asia.

In conclusion, the book investigates a number of as-pects that seem relevant for understanding the particularuse of the media by this movement, thereby offering anoriginal perspective of the movement as well as, more ingeneral, the media in Turkey. At the same time, the bookdescribes the conflict that resulted in the clash between

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the Gülen Movement and the AKP, widely developedthrough the Turkish media, allowing an understandingof a number of elements characterising the complex re-lationship between Islam and politics in today’s Turkey.

Translation Francesca Simmons Pomeroy

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On July 9, 2014, Turkey’s Prime Minister, RecepTayyip Erdoğan, filed a civil complaint against BülentKeneş, the Editor-in-Chief of the country’s largest Englishlanguage newspaper, Today’s Zaman. Citing commentsmade by Keneş on Twitter, Erdoğan’s lawyer stated thatalthough the journalist did not call out the Prime Minsterby name, he had gone beyond the limits of free speechby implicitly “insulting a public official.” This was notthe first time Erdoğan filed a claim against Keneş oragainst an employee at Today’s Zaman. A few monthsearlier on March 29, one day before Turkey’s 2014 mu-nicipal elections, Erdoğan filed lawsuits against Keneș,Memhmet Kamıș, the deputy editor of Today’s Zaman’sTurkish language parent, Zaman, as well as against Zamanjournalist Önder Aytaç and Today’s Zaman opinion writer,Emre Uslu. These complaints were registered at a timewhen Erdoğan was repeatedly calling upon Turkish read-ers to boycott Zaman and Today’s Zaman, and when jour-nalists from both newspapers were being routinely re-moved from government press briefings.

Responding to what was framed as an attack on themedia group that owned Zaman and Today’s Zaman,Keneş and many columnists at both papers dedicated

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Corrupted Speech:e Movement, the Party,

and the Breakdownof the New Turkey

Joshua Hendrick

hundreds of pages of printing space during the first sevenmonths of 2014 to criticize Prime Minster Erdoğan formuzzling free speech. Erdoğan’s efforts, they argued, tar-geted these news outlets because they were regularly re-porting about corruption allegations that began to marErdoğan’s regime in December 2013. Defending bothhis person and his paper’s coverage of the corruptionclaims, Keneş wrote in his regular Today’s Zaman opinioncolumn:

Unfortunately, Erdoğan – who seeks domination of thecountry and ignores democratic principles and the rule oflaw – has plenty of instruments to achieve this goal. Hisdomination over the media and communication sectors areone of his most effective tools. Thanks to the censorship andoppression that Erdoğan has imposed via media power man-aged directly by him and state institutions working underhis tutelage, he is able to present his government’s biggestfailures as a success - or at least he can hide the facts aboutthese failures from the public attention.1

State/Media Relations in “the New Turkey”

It is no secret that modern Turkey has long struggledwith press freedoms. For much of the country’s history,print and broadcast media were monopolized by a mix-ture of state-owned enterprises and by a small handfulof family-based holding companies. It is also true thatalthough the interests of the state were rarely questioned

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1 Keneş Bülent, “Erdoğan No Longer Wants to Govern Turkey”,Today’s Zaman, 8 April 2014.

in twentieth century Turkey, public debate often thrived.In the 1960s and 1970s, political battle lines pitted “left-ists” against “rightists;” and in the 1980s and 1990s theselines were redrawn to pit “secularists” against “Islamists.”Different groups consumed news from a range of ideo-logically diverse newspapers, and stories about govern-ment corruption, cronyism, and graft were regular.Notwithstanding a lively public sphere, the degree of di-versity available was regulated, and there were alwayscertain topics that remained off-limits for public discus-sion. A senior newspaper journalist whose career stretchedback to the late-1970s explained as follows: “In the olddays [e.g., before 2002] ... we knew the rules ... youcould not discuss the Kurds, and you could not discussissues related to the claims of the Armenians”.2

Following a nearly three-year long reign of a junta be-tween 1980 and 1983, Turkey began a long process ofliberalization that dramatically transformed the country’smedia landscape. Reaching an apex in the early 2000s,and coinciding with the rise of the Turkey’s Justice andDevelopment Party (JDP) in 2002, ongoing neoliberalreforms have created the conditions for private conglom-erates to expand their interests into diverse sectors. Mediafirms have expanded into industry, and corporate indus-trial firms have expanded their holdings into mass media.For the first time in Turkey’s history, companies compet-ing in the arena of mass news and entertainment havebecome linked to companies competing in heavy con-struction, energy, resource extraction, industrial chemi-cals, and other sectors that required state-administeredcontracting. And because critical press coverage could re-

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2 Field Interview, June 2013.

sult in the loss of lucrative state contracts, a refined formof market-oriented despotism began to take root.

This new reality was put on display in 2008 when aGerman court found a JDP-linked German-Turkish re-ligious foundation (Deniz Feneri) guilty of fraud andembezzlement. In case proceedings, JDP officials inTurkey were named as alleged accomplices in the Ger-many-based scheme, and links to Prime Minister Erdoğanwere mentioned as warranting an investigation. ManyTurkish newspapers and television stations that regularlyreported on the Deniz Feneri case were affiliated withwhat was, at that time, the country’s largest media firm,the Doğan Group. Without ever explicitly denying thecharges, Erdoğan responded that ubiquitous coverage ofthe case was indicative of a plot by Ahmet Doğan, thecompany’s CEO, to exact revenge upon the JDP gov-ernment for a previous refusal by the Istanbul zoningcommission to issue permits that would have allowedDoğan to expand one of his hotels. Doğan dismissedthis accusation; but he did begin to publicly accuse thePrime Minster of fostering favoritism. In this instance,however, he cited the state’s refusal to permit a DoğanGroup subsidiary to build a new oil refinery on theMediterranean, a project that was given instead to theÇalık Group, a company whose vice president at thetime was Erdoğan’s son-in-law.3

For months, reportage on the alleged JDP corruptionwas regular in Doğan-owned newspapers, which led anangry Erdoğan to call upon Turks to boycott Doğan-

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3 Hendrick Joshua D., “Media Wars and the Gülen Factor in the NewTurkey”, Middle East Report, 2011, 260, pp. 40-46.

owned media. This battle’s victorious blow was struck inSeptember 2009 when tax authorities levied the largestfine in Turkish history upon the Doğan Group to thetune of $3.2 billion.4 Doğan was forced to sell off muchof his company’s media holdings, and reporting on theDeniz Feneri scandal came to an abrupt end. When dis-cussing this new reality, the same journalist quoted aboveexplained, “Nowadays ... you do not know the rules ...well you know the rules but they are different ... nowyou cannot discuss the Prime Minster or the party [JDP]... his private life, business dealings, or any potential cor-ruption ... nowadays these topics are off limits.5

The Doğan V. Erdoğan affair highlighted that by 2008Erdoğan and the JDP had expanded “the rules” ofstate/media relations in Turkey. Still, Erdoğan’s clasheswith Keneş and his colleagues in 2014 seemed different.Unlike The Doğan Group, the media group to whichZaman and Today’s Zaman belong was not invested inother sectors. Moreover, up until recently, both publica-tions shared an editorial line that was widely viewed aspromoting unconditional support for JDP policy objec-tives both domestic and foreign. Indeed, in regard tostories about alleged JDP favoritism and corruption in2008, Keneş dedicated several of his columns in Today’sZaman to defend the JDP:

It must be acknowledged that the [JDP’s] report card isconsiderably free from guilt with respect to fraud and corrup-tion when compared to previous governments. How do weknow? Simple: The public resources of a country will not rad-

27

4 Ibidem.5 Field Interview, June 2013.

ically increase or decrease in a short time. However, the pro-portion of these resources being spent in services for the benefitof the public can considerably change depending on how theyare used and whether they are wasted or transferred to unde-serving people. For this reason, given the benefits created bythe [the JDP’s] terms in government and the economic andsocial development it brought to the country, we can concludethat the [JDPs] involvement in corruption has been insignif-icant compared to previous governments . . . It would bea great injustice to say that [the JDP] government is entirelycharacterized by big cases of corruption”.6

Such was Keneş’s assessment in 2008. According to ajournalist employed by CNNTurk in 2013, however,“not since the Doğan tax fine has anyone reported onthe Prime Minster’s private business dealings”.7 Althoughtrue at the time, by the end of 2013 this was no longerthe case. Beginning in December and continuing relent-lessly for months thereafter, stories about alleged JDPcorruption again became ubiquitous. This time, however,it was Zaman and Today’s Zaman that led the reporting,and it was these papers that Erdoğan sought to silence.What changed?

The Gülen Movement

Zaman and Today’s Zaman newspapers are part of theFeza Media Group, a medium-sized firm that is affiliated

28

6 Keneş Bülent, “Politics and Prevention of Corruption”, Today’sZaman, 25 April 2008.

7 Field Interview, June 2013.

with Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement (GM). Refer-ring to themselves by the moniker, Hizmet (service), GMassociates put into practice the teachings of M. FethullahGülen, Turkey’s most influential, and most controversial,religious community leader. His network consists ofthousands of institutions and millions of individualswho, together with Turkish ex-patriots in over 120 coun-tries, reproduce a multi-billion dollar network of schools,trade, finance, information communication technologies,construction, legal services, accounting, public relations,publishing, and mass news and entertainment.

Known to his admires as “Hocaeffendi” (“EsteemedTeacher”), Fethullah Gülen disseminates his teachingsin print and online8 via hundreds of books, essay collec-tions, periodicals, and websites. Although the entirety ofhis oeuvre is available in Turkish, a large body of hiswork (although often incomplete) is translated into Eng-lish, and to a lesser degree into dozens of other worldlanguages. The central refrain in Gülen’s articulatedworldview is a need for “volunteers” who are “filled withlove for all of humanity” to form what Gülen calls “thegeneration of hope.” The task of this generation is tocultivate a future “golden generation” (altın nesil) thatwill create the conditions for the end of days:

What we need now is not ordinary people, but ratherpeople devoted to divine reality ... people who by puttinginto practice their thoughts, lead first their own nation, andthen all people, to enlightenment and to help them findGod ... dedicated spirits ... who wander like Israfil ... onthe verge of blowing the last trumpet in order to prepare

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8 See http://fGülen.com/en/.

dead spirits for the Day of Resurrection ... How fortunateare the blessed cadre to be the fuse to such an event. And,again, how fortunate are the ones whose breasts are receptiveto this breeze.9

GM-affiliated teachers, businessmen, outreach ac-tivists, journalists, and others constitute Gülen’s “blessedcadre” whose members are asked to dedicate their time,money, and energy to create the conditions for the com-ing of the golden generation. Throughout his many essayson the topic, Gülen refers to the current “generation ofhope” as an “army of light” and as “soldiers of truth.”

The “truth” that Gülen’s soldiers promote is that hu-manity has strayed from the path of divinely inspiredwisdom, which he views as a crisis stemming from emptyconsumerism (materialism), carnality, and individualism.Helping Turkish and world society recover from moraldecline requires aksiyon insanları (humans of action) andhizmet insanları (humans of service) who can offer thecoming generation irşad (moral guidance). Such guidanceis presented at the micro level by elders (ağabeyler) in theGülen community, at the mezzo level in classrooms andin community social groups (sohbetler), and at the macrolevel via publishing and mass media.

Beginning in the late 1960s as a splinter group of apre-existing religious community (i.e., Turkey’s Said NursiMovement), by the late 1970s, Fethullah Gülen was at-tracting large crowds. Around this time, his followersoperated several student dormitories in İzmir and Edirne,and audiocassettes of his sermons were disseminated

30

9 Gülen Fethullah, Toward a Civilization of Love and Tolerance, TheLight Publishing, Somerset, NJ, 2004, pp. 105-110.

widely. During the 1980-1983 junta, Gülen’s followersfound opportunity in private education.10 In an effort toavoid state suppression as an illegal religious congregation,affiliates restructured a number of pre-existing dormito-ries to function as private education institutions. In 1982,Yamanlar High School in İzmir and Fatih High Schoolin Istanbul became the first “Gülen-inspired schools”(GISs) in Turkey. Over the course of the 1980s, dozensmore were opened. In addition to private elementaryand secondary schools, the GM enterprise expandedquickly into the field of standardized exam preparation.Called dershaneler (“lesson houses”), the GM eventuallycornered a niche in cram-course curriculum, as studentsbecame known for their high scores on Turkey’s central-ized high school and university placement exams.

Connecting students to a growing network of schools,education-related businesses, media companies, infor-mation and communication companies, publishing firms,exporters, and financiers allowed the GM to create foritself a growing pool of human resources from which todraw upon in search of employees, suppliers, clients, andpatrons. GISs were not only staffed by affiliated teachers,but also with media and technical equipment, textbooks,and stationary goods from affiliated firms. Owners ofthese firms maintained close social ties to the GM bysubsidizing student rent at işık evleri (“houses of light,”i.e., student apartments), by providing scholarships tostudents to attend private GISs, and by providing start-up capital for new GM ventures. In 1986, for instance,

31

10 Hendrick Joshua D., Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islamin Turkey and the World. New York University Press, New York, 2013,pp.123-143. Yavuz Hakan, Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The GülenMovement. New York University Press, New York, 2013, pp. 92-116.

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GM-affiliates bought a pre-existing newspaper, Zaman,and, once Turkey liberalized broadcast media in the early1990s, the same firm began its first television venture,Samanyolu TV. Together, these became the two most suc-cessful companies in the Feza Media Group.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the GMtook advantage of the Turkish state’s effort to cultivaterelations with post-Soviet republics. GIS’s were begunwith Turkish start-up capital throughout Central Asiaand the Balkans and affiliated business ventures followed.To facilitate trade with these regions, an export-orientedtrade association emerged, İş Hayatı Dayanışma Derneği(IȘHAD, The Association for Solidarity in Business Life,est. 1994). A shipping and transport firm was establishedaround the same time, as was an “Islamic” (interest-free,profit sharing) bank (Asya Finans, now Bank Asya, est.1996). In 2005, a number of smaller regional trade asso-ciations followed IȘHAD’s lead to form Türkiyeİşadamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu (TUSKON, theConfederation of Businessmen and Industrialists inTurkey), now Turkey’s largest business-related NGO.

With greater influence came a need to frame a publicimage that could be perceived as worthy of social prestige.In a public relations campaign that began in 1994, anotherwing of the GM’s operational ethos was born in the Turk-ish mountain town of Abant. There, a group of GM-affil-iated outreach activists gathered together a number ofTurkey’s most widely read journalists and opinion colum-nists, as well as a number of academicians and writers froma variety of fields. Known thereafter as “the Abant Plat-form,” this meeting was envisioned as an opportunity fora diverse group of thinkers to discuss some of the more

troubling aspects of Turkish political society. It spawnedthe emergence of the primary GM-affiliated think tankand outreach organization, The Gazeticiler ve Yazarlar Vak-fı (GYV, Journalists and Writers Foundation).11

The GM’s expansion in the 1990s came at a timewhen political Islam was on the rise in Turkey under theleadership of the Refah Partisi (RP, Welfare Party). Afterwinning a plurality in 1996, the RP formed a coalitiongovernment and its leader, Necmettin Erbakan, becameTurkey’s first “Islamist” Prime Minster. Political success,however, was short-lived and in February 1997, the RPwas forced from power in a near coup.12 Focusing its ef-forts outside party politics, the GM was able to navigatethe RP’s rise and abrupt fall, but it did not emerge fromthis period unscathed. Interpreted widely as an aftershockof February 27, in 1999 Fethullah Gülen fled to theUnited States. According to his spokespeople, the reasonwas for medical treatment for a chronic condition.Whether true or not, shortly after his emigration, Gülenwas indicted in absentia for being the leader of an allegedcriminal organization that aimed to overthrow the Turk-ish state. He has lived in the U.S. ever since.

Following Gülen’s self exile, GM activists created GYV-modeled outreach and dialogue institutions throughoutthe world wherever the GM managed GIS’s and wherever

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11 About this organization (http://gyv.org.tr), see the essay of MariaConcetta Tedesco “The Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV)” inthis volume, p. 103.

12 In what became infamously known as “The February 28 process,”Turkey’s military forced Erbakan from power by threatening a militarycoup. This was enough to rather quickly cause the RP government tocollapse. In the two years that followed, the state cracked down on allforms of faith-based social and political organizing. For his part, Er-doğan was briefly imprisoned on charges of “inciting hatred” by readinga religiously tinged poem during a public speech.

GM-affiliates conducted business. Today, the U.S. hoststhe most influential of these institutions outside Turkey,and the most in number.13 In 2008, a federal court inPennsylvania granted Gülen permanent residency in theU.S. In the same year, Gülen was named “the world’smost influential public intellectual” in an online pollconducted by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.14

Although critiqued by the editors of both magazines asillustrating little more than a keen ability to manipulatethe outcomes of an online poll, between the years of2007 and 2012 the GM reached an apex in prestige andinfluence in Turkey and in countries around the world.15

The JDP-GM coalition and GM Media in Turkey

From the beginning of the JDP-era in 2002 until theperiod following the JDP’s third electoral victory in the

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13 Such organizations include the Rumi Forum in Washington D.C. (http://www.rumiforum.org, est. 1999), the Dialogue Institute inHouston (http://www.interfaithdialog.org, est. 2002), the Niagara Foun-dation in Chicago (http://www.niagarafoundation.org, est. 2004), andthe Pacifica Institute in Southern California (http://www.pacificain-stitute.org, est 2003). Representing the regional leadership of dozensof similar institutions throughout he country, these organizations arecollectively organized by the GM umbrella organization, The TurkicAmerican Alliance (http://turkicamericanalliance.org).

14 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/08/03/meet_fethul-lah_guelen_the_worlds_top_public_intellectual

15 In addition to its nearly 1 thousand private schools in over 120countries, its mass media and entertainment ventures in print, television,and online, in trade and finance initiatives, and its lobbying andoutreach work, the GM runs a successful first respondent relief organ-ization, Kimse Yok Mu? (http://www.kimseyokmu.org.tr/?lang=en), anumber of modern hospitals in Turkey, and over 150 publicly fundedcharter schools in the United States. In April 2013, Time Magazinenamed Fethullah Gülen one of the world’s most influential people(http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/fethullah-Gülen/).

summer of 2011, the movement and the party wereclosely aligned as a conservative “new Turkey” coalition.JDP leaders like Bülent Arınç, Abdullah Gül, Ali Baba-can, and even Prime Minster Erdoğan regularly endorsedGM-sponsored events (e.g., the Abant Platform) andregularly praised the achievement of GM-affiliated “Turk-ish schools” while on state visits to Thailand, Kenya,South Africa, and elsewhere. Linking the JDP desire toexpand bilateral trade, government leaders regularly sup-ported TUSKON trade summits, and public companiessuch as Turkish Airlines became regular sponsors of GM-organized events (e.g., Turkish Language Olympics, etc.).By 2011, a number of figures with known GM affinitieseven ran as JDP candidates. Although signifying growingstrength, the GM’s close proximity to Erdoğan’s govern-ment called into question its long-stated identity as adistinctly “nonpolitical” collective actor. Highlightingthis emerging contradiction was the change in tone ob-servable throughout GM media from general conser-vatism to unconditional JDP apologetics.

Among the GM media’s primary objectives during itsperiod of domestic growth in the 1980s, and in the con-text of its transnational expansion in the 1990s, was tocarve out a voice for social conservatism in secular Turkey.A senior figure in the GM organization explained as fol-lows:

The newspaper [Zaman] was founded in 1986. Beforethen there were the attempts of other Muslim entrepreneursbut they could not survive ... In Turkey, media was a mo-nopoly ... journalists were ... totally leftist, atheist people ...Journalists were always of that origin. So, there were aspi-

35

rations to do something about this ... So, a newspaperwas needed ... Then what happened? [After Zaman startedpublication] the other papers could not write fake news, be-cause [by then], our correspondents were everywhere and bythen we had a newspaper and a television channel. Youmust think of Zaman as a tool to correct fake news.

And also a crowd of people consisting of students at [GM]schools plus their families ... the people who listened to Ho-caefendi’s sermons in the mosques of Izmir and Istanbul, inSultanahmet, Suleymaniye, etc. People overcrowded themosques and not everybody could listen to him. And therewas a need to inform people correctly.

So, a more general medium was needed. Media fulfilledthis. Instead of preaching in mosques, [we] used these tools.And [we] addressed many more people from the TV throughseveral different kinds of productions.16

After taking over Zaman, GM affiliates expanded theirmedia holdings to include two nationally-broadcastedtelevision stations (Samanyolu TV, Mehtap TV), an Eng-lish language satellite television (Ebru TV, based in NewJersey), a nationally-broadcasted radio station (Burç FM),thirteen foreign edition newspapers, Turkey’s mostwidely-distributed political magazine (Aksiyon), a sizablenews collection agency (Cihan Haber Ajansı), and Turkey’smost widely-distributed English-language publication(Today’s Zaman). And while these companies compriseThe Feza Group, the GM is also widely-known to haveclose proximity with the industrial Koza İpek HoldingGroup, which publishes Bügun Newspaper, as well aswith the independent Taraf Newspaper. Together with

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16 Field Interview, Winter 2007.

an expanding collection of media with direct links tothe JDP, a new media alliance emerged in the 2000swhose parent firms received strategic support from theJDP state.17

Battle Lines Redrawn

After the JDP’s third electoral victory in 2011, overlap-ping interests between the GM and the JDP (e.g., con-servative social politics, economically liberal development,removing the Turkish military’s oversight from Turkishpolitics and society) were no longer enough to hold thetwo entities together. The result was the initiation of abureaucratic, legal, and public relations war that contin-ues today. According to a number of observers, the be-ginning of this conflict extends back to 2010; otherspoint to one or another significant event in 2011 or2012. Signifying indicators of emerging tensions includeGülen’s public disagreement of the JDP’s handling ofthe infamous “Mavi Marmara Incident,18” the subpoenaof Hakan Fidan (the AKP appointed Chief of National

37

17 Hendrick, op. cit., Middle East Report, 2011. Yeşil, Bilge, “PressCensorship in Turkey: Networks of State Power, Commercial Pressures,and Self-Censorship,” Communication, Culture, and Critique. Vol 7 (2),2014, pp.154-173.

18 The Mavi Marmara Incident refers to an event that transpired in2010 when a flotilla of aid ships led by a Turkish religious charitysought to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip in Palestine. Aninternational collection of activists boarded ships in an attempt todeliver food and aid. When the flotilla entered Israeli waters, Israelicommandoes boarded one of the ships, and opened fire on the unarmedactivists, killing nine people. All were Turks and eight were Turkish cit-izens (one was a Turkish American). It took over two years for Israel toapologize for the event, and Turkish-Israeli relations have never fullyrecovered.

Intelligence) in 2012 by a state prosecutor with allegedties to the GM, and public disagreement between Gülenand Erdoğan during the Gezi Park protests in the summerof 2013. Whenever it began, speculations about a brewingfeud were proven correct in the final months of 2013when the two powers more forcefully collided. A briefaccount of ongoing friction is as follows. On November 17, 2013 Zaman published leaked detailsabout the JDP’s plan to close all standardized exam prepschools (dershaneler) in Turkey. As the primary source ofrecruitment for the GM’s collective organization, thismove constituted an existential attack on the GM’s abilityto reproduce itself in the long term. On December 17,2013, and again on December 25, state prosecutors withalleged links to the GM retaliated by arresting the sonsof three JDP cabinet minsters, as well as a number ofstate bureaucrats and businessmen on charges of graftand bribery. Also arrested was an Azeri-Iranian business-man who was accused of orchestrating a gold smugglingoperation between Turkey and Iran. Evidence includedshoe boxes of cash found in suspects’ homes, and voicerecordings that, among other things, implicated a numberof JDP officials including Bilal Erdoğan, the Prime Min-ister’s son. How and why did information about the closing ofTurkey’s exam prep schools leak to Zaman? What explainsthe timing of the state prosecutor’s plan to move forwardwith the December 17 and 25 raids and arrests? Followingthe subordination of the Turkish military to civilian au-thority in the context of Turkey’s Ergenekoninvestigation,19 the GM and the JDP both sought to

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19 Ergenekon refers to a nearly seven-year investigation and courthearing of an alleged network of retired and active military personnel,

consolidate their power. In allegations that are emphati-cally denied throughout GM-affiliated media sources,GM actors are believed to control much of the Turkishjudiciary and police force and are believed to have shiftedtheir investigative attention from the Kemalist old guardto the JDP. This conspiracy was exacerbated in late 2012when Prime Minster Erdoğan discovered recording de-vices in his offices. Shortly after, Erdoğan initiated anexpansive plan to crush what he later termed the “parallelstate” in Turkey, by which he meant the GM.

2014 began with Erdoğan lambasting “the parallelstate” for attempting a coup against the JDP. In themonths that followed, hundreds of policemen were firedor reassigned in precincts throughout the country, anddozens of prosecutors were removed from their posts.Following this, several audio-recordings incriminating anumber of JDP officials, as well as Prime Minister Er-doğan and his son, were posted on Twitter. Shortly beforethe March 2014 municipal elections, Erdoğan cited Twit-ter as a menace to society and had his government block

39

and social/business elites accused of conspiring to topple the JDP gov-ernment. In August 2013, 275 people were issued final sentences, in-cluding several retired Turkish generals. 19 people were sentenced tolife in prison. In the context of the Ergenekon case (2007-2013), addi-tional plots to overthrow the JDP were allegedly uncovered includinga plan called “Sledgehammer,” another called “Glove,” and anothercalled “Cage.” These three were rolled into the Ergenekon case, al-though the suspects for each case were tried in court as separate groups.In June 2014, those convicted in the Sledgehammer case were grantedthe right of a retrial in accordance with an appeals ruling that deter-mined their right to a fair trial was neglected. For a scathing critique ofthe nearly seven-year saga, and of the GM’s alleged role in orchestratingwide-scale fabrication therein, see Rodrik 2014.

Turkish access to the site. Erdoğan defended this moveby proclaiming that democracy that was under siege inTurkey:

“December 17 is a black stain on Turkey’s democratichistory ... It has surpassed all previous coup attempts andhas been recorded as a betrayal of the state, democracy andthe nation.” 20

Although the Twitter ban was overturned in earlyApril, the March 30 elections resulted in a substantialvictory for the JDP (43 percent) in local polls.

After the elections, Erdoğan took his fight against “theparallel state” [the GM] to new heights. His regime con-tinued to purge police departments and prosecutors’ of-fices, encouraged public divestment from the GM-affil-iated Bank Asya, and even explored ways to force thatinstitution’s nationalization. The regime blocked statecontracts with GM-affiliated firms (e.g., tenders withKoza-İpek Holding), and canceled the state’s support forGM-sponsored public relations events (e.g., Turkish Lan-guage Olympics).

For his part, Gülen regularly responded to these eventswith emphatic denials that he or his admirers had any-thing to do with illegal wiretappings, with stirring uppublic unrest, or with orchestrating criminal investiga-tions. GM-affiliated media, specifically Zaman and Today’sZaman newspapers, however, shifted much of their focus

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20 Resneck Jacob, “Muslim cleric linked to Turkish corruption probe”,see:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/muslim-cleric-linked-to-turkish-corruption-probe/2014/01/17/55698400-7fa8-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html

to relentless reporting on the topic, a reality that contin-ues today amidst daily revelations.21

Conclusion: Wither the New Turkey?

Having grown in size and influence during the JDPera, the GM expanded its influence, in part, by creat-ing a mass media infrastructure that bridged socialconservatism with the demands of democratization,free markets, and expanded trade. Aligned by mutualinterests, the GM played a crucial role in legitimizingthe JDP during its first two terms in power by usingits media to present the party as Turkey’s only hopefor democratic reform and corruption-free governance.In turn, the JDP provided for the GM strategic re-sources to expand its education and business initiativesboth domestically and abroad, and created the condi-tions for the GM to increase its influence in the Turk-ish legal system. In an effort to forge a new conserva-tive power structure that subordinated the Turkishmilitary, and that created opportunities for a new classof social, political, and economic elites, this “newTurkey coalition” harmonized because each “side” pro-vided for the other much needed access, coverage, andsupport. The result was a “passive revolution” of con-

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21 An English language account of this struggle from the GM’s per-spective is available here:

http://www.todayszaman.com/national_ErdoğanErdoğans-war-against-hizmet-step-by-step_353694.html. An interview with Fethul-lah Gülen that was conducted by a GM-affiliated journalist andpublished in Zaman and Today’s Zaman about this saga is available here:

http://www.todayszaman.com/_part-1-islamic-scholar-Gülen-calls-conditions-in-turkey-worse-than-military-coup_342261.html

servative social power that transformed the TurkishRepublic in the global era.33

Illustrated by Erdoğan’s lawsuits against Bülent Keneşand by his more general efforts to silence GM-affiliatednews media, however, Turks are becoming more acutelyaware that the coalition that created “the new Turkey” isbeing dismantled from the inside out. Moreover, Turkey’sloss of democratic legitimacy in the context Erdoğan’sattacks on the free press, together with the GM’s collectiveinability to defend itself against claims of power hoardingin various strategic institutions of state, signify that boththe movement and the party have much to lose in thisbattle. Whatever the outcome, the GM remains secondonly to the JDP in defining conservatism and nationalidentity for pious Turks; and the JDP remains the onlyTurkish political party that can win enough votes to leg-islate in its interests. Considering the power and influenceof both collectives, how this struggle ends will influenceTurkish development for generations to come.

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33 Hendrick, op. cit., New York University Press, New York, 2013.Tuğal Cihan, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Cap-italism, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA, 2009.

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The Justice and Development Party (AKP) and theGülen community, or the Cemaat (“The Community”)as it is formally known:

The AKP is a political party founded mainly by themembers of the Islamic organization Milli Görüş (“Na-tional Vision”) which, during the initial phase of consti-tution, was characterized by the distance it took frompolitical Islam as demonstrated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’sfamous affirmation, “I have taken off the National Visioncoat.” Despite this fact, over the past few years in powerand especially from 2011 onwards, the party has rapidlydecreased its initial distance from political Islam. TheAKP has come out on top of all political elections from2002 until today, managing to stay in power on its own.On the other hand, Fethullah Gülen  has successfullytransformed his community into a very large-scale andpowerful movement which operates mainly within thesocial field but is still quite influential in various otherfields, from education to mass media, commercial enter-prises to labor unions, think tanks to bureaucratic per-sonnel.

This article first of all aims to focus on how and why

e conflict between Recep Tayyip Erdoğanand Fethullan Gülen in terms

of its various dimensions and motivations

Ruşen Çakır - Semih Sakallı

these two movements have passed from being allies toengaging in a fierce conflict in such a short time. Subse-quently, we will discuss what the AKP and theGülen community – which both define themselves withan Islamic and conservative identity, albeit in differentways – represent, as well as the meanings that these rep-resentations carry in relation to the war in question.

From alliance to conflict: The relationship between the AKPand the Gülen community

We will begin our discussion on the relationship be-tween the AKP and the Gülen community by placingthe objectives of both at the center of attention, and, inso doing, seek to explain three stages in the relationship inquestion. The first stage of “integration” sees as protago-nist the AKP, who on 3 November 2002 rose to poweralone. When it won the elections, the AKP was perfectlyaware of the fact that it would have to deal both with asystem, as well as the main actors by whom it was con-trolled, which defined it as “the enemy.” For this reason,it did not hesitate in developing all possible forms of col-laboration with  these centers of power. Furthermore,during this stage the AKP was particularly generous interms of compromises, since it came to life and grewwithin a deep-rooted political tradition and thereforeknew that it would have been mandatory to assume thisattitude in order to be integrated into the system.

Throughout the integration stage,  the relations be-tween the AKP and the Gülen  community were coldand distant. The main reason for this fact was the reluc-tance of the AKP government to harm its relations withthe military, who saw the Gülen community  as their

44

“principal enemy.” Although the AKP government didnot fully satisfy the demands of the military, at the sametime it absolutely didn’t want to give the image of a party“allied with the Cemaat against the Turkish Armed Forces(TSK).” Together with the aid of the global balance ofpower, the AKP government reached its goal of integra-tion into Turkey’s existing political system to a large ex-tent. However, that was a precarious and temporary bal-ance, which had been transformed into an almostmandatory condition by the global conjuncture; in otherwords, the parties would not have been able to preservethis state of integration for too long and they were bothwell aware of its transience. In fact, through the RepublicProtests1 that saw the participation of members of themilitary and the judiciary, Ataturkers, Kemalists, socialdemocrats and supporters of the Turkish left, several at-tempts had been made to prevent the appointment ofAbdullah Gül to the presidency, to block the proposalfor a law that would have liberalized the Islamic veil,and to close the AKP by means judicial proceedings. Atthis point, the AKP had reached the threshold of a newstage with two options in front of it: Either it couldcomplete the integration process and become by all meansa “central party” or it could engage in a conflict againstthe existing sovereign powers, which would lead to theliquidation of either the party itself or it adversaries.

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1 Republican Demonstrations (Cumhuriyet Mitingleri) are a series ofprotests that took place between April and May 2007 in reaction to apossible candidacy in the presidential elections before the PrimeMinister ErdoğanErdoğan and Abdullah Gül after him. The first, calledin the name of the principle of secularism, took place in Ankara at themausoleum of Ataturk, two weeks before the presidential election, withthe participation of over one million people [editor’s note].

AKP chose the second option, thus launching what wewill call the “liquidation” stage. In order to be able tocompensate for its own failures and weaknesses, whichwould be have become even more evident during theconflict, the party established a relationship based onfull alliance with the Gülen community. Such a decisioncan be explained by three main factors:

• The ideological affinity between the party and theGülen community;

• The important power of the Gülen community interms of already trained personnel, presence withinthe bureaucracy and media power;

• The presence of common objectives between theparty and the Gülen community

The alliance founded on these grounds worked almostperfectly until the constitutional referendum of 2011.Most of the members and supporters of the so-called“military tutelage” and “deep state” were gradually takeninto custody and many of them were subsequently ar-rested. The main objective of this operation, which wasto upset the balance of power within the Turkish ArmedForces (TSK), was largely achieved. Taking into consid-eration the modus operandi adopted by the TSK, theparty would have faced more difficulty in placing itsown men in vital positions within the TSK as comparedto the bureaucracy or the police. Despite this fact, how-ever, the AKP - Cemaat alliance managed to reduce thepower, the motivation and the concentration of the mil-itary to a large extent.

The AKP - Cemaat alliance, which substantially neu-

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tralized the TSK, succeeded in upsetting the quite en-trenched - especially after 1980 - balance of power inTurkey at a fast pace and with great dedication. Legit-imizing its actions by the well-known proverb “Fire, oncestarted, does not spare anyone,” the alliance often tram-pled on rights and fundamental freedoms without scru-ples. Despite the well-trained and expert staff providedby the Gülen community, the popular consent earnedby the AKP – amounting up to 50% of the populationas well as the large support of various groups, particularlythe political Kurdish movement, which had been previ-ously victimized by the strict securitarian policies of themilitary – the “liquidation” and the “conquest  of thevital positions” (especially within the High Jurisdiction)did not (or could not) occur either at the level or at thespeed expected. According to the alliance, theobstacle  could be removed  through an amendment tothe constitution, and therefore the government submittedto referendum the proposal for a “package law” containingmany articles which would have been certainly greetedwith enthusiasm by the general population, while its trueaim was to realize some radical changes especially withinthe High Jurisdiction. The Gülen community  was ascommitted to this cause as the AKP itself, and in orderto achieve the approval of the referendum, evenGülen  himself launched a public appeal for a“YES.” There is no doubt that this change of attitude onbehalf of the Cemaat, which owed its success mainly toits “meta-political” attitude that it had always assumeduntil then, shed light on the desire to occupy an impor-tant role in the new balance of power which would havebeen formed within the High Jurisdiction.

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Taking a glance at the general picture which appearsin front of our eyes today, we can see how the AKP,unlike the Cemaat, was not committed enough to con-trolling the new balance of power that would be formedwithin the High Jurisdiction, and as a result, its crucialpositions were mainly occupied by the followers of Gülen.Though the AKP government was well aware of disad-vantages of this position, initially there was no evidentreason to complain about it, and the government  didnot move any objections to the presence of  theCemaat within the High Jurisdiction as long as the al-liance between the two powers worked as expected. Onthe other hand, with the widening of the reach of thepolitical trials mentioned above and their increasing ille-gitimacy, the government drew sharp criticisms from theWest. Though finding this situation quite uncomfortable,the AKP assumed neither a consistent nor a principledattitude and pretended not to note some serious judicialerrors until the party itself was directly penalized. Insome other cases, the AKP went as far as justifying thesejudicial errors.

Fethullah Gülen’s severe criticism of the AKP govern-ment after the Freedom Flotilla incident,2 which led to acrisis with Israel, provoked some doubts regarding thestrength of the alliance which, all things considered,seemed to have been working perfectly since 2007. De-spite all the aspects that have been illustrated so far, itwas yet impossible to think that this small-scale crisiscould lead to a deep crack in such a politically-motivatedalliance.

2 About the Mavi Manara accident see footnote 18 of Hendrick essayin this monograph, p. 23.

The MIT3 (The Turkish Intelligence Agency) crisisprovoked suspicions by the two parties, who had formeda very successful alliance during the “liquidation”stage, about the extent to which they were truly collabo-rating to achieve the same political purposes. Even thoughduring that time they tried not to attract much attentionfrom the dissent by stating that everything was “nothingbut a vile attempt to introduce enmity between them,”later on it became clear that they had not limited them-selves only to analyzing the situation and discussing itfurther, but had also dedicated much time to gatheringthe information and the documents that they wouldlater use against each other in the future. Did the MITcrisis break out because the two major actors in powerdidn’t succeed in coming to an agreement on how tosolve the Kurdish question, or did it announce a farther-reaching struggle for power? We will find the answer tothis question in the final stage of the relationship betweenthe AKP and the Gülen community from 2002 to today;in other words, in the conflict between the AKP andthe Cemaat.

Although the alliance, whose usual harmony keptfading down after the MIT crisis, had already becomemuch shakier after the events of Gezi Park4, the breaking

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3 The crisis consists in the convocation of the Undersecretary of theMIT Hakan Fidan, the former undersecretary Emre Taner, the formerdeputy-secretary Afet Güneş and two officers of the MIT by the spe-cially authorized prosecutor in Istanbul Sadrettin Sarıkaya to release adeposition as “suspects” due to the correspondences between some MITofficials and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party).

4 The events started out with the the demonstrations against the gov-ernment’s initiative to reconstruct, as part of the pedestrianization proj-ect of  Taksim, the Halil  Pasha Artillery Barracks in their formerlocation where currently Gezi Park stands, despite the court’s decision

point was reached when the government decided toclose the  dershanes and immediately after when, as acounterattack, the police forces affiliated withthe  Cemaat  launched an operation against corruptionand bribery5 in which Erdoğan himself, his family, someof his trusted collaborators and some entrepreneurs andbusinessmen close to the government were involved. Rightafter the police operation, the government intensified itsattempts to liquidate the Gülen community more andmore, using all the means at its disposal, and succeededin large part to achieve its goal; thus revealing theremoval of the Cemaat from its leading role in power, a

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to cancel the project. The demonstrations were transformed into a mas-sive anti-government reaction due to the statements of the Prime Min-ister Erdoğan and disproportionate use of force by the police forcesinvolved in the clashes. The events gave voice to protest against the op-pressive policies adopted by the AKP government especially in the re-cent time period.

5 On the morning of 17 December 2013, many bureaucrats and busi-nessmen including Barış Güler (the son of the Minister of the Inte-rior Muhammer Güler), Salih Kaan Çağlayan (the son of the Ministerof Economy Mehmet Zafer Çağlayan), Abdullah Oğuz Bayraktar (theson of the Minister of Environment and Urban Planning ErdoğanBayraktar), the real estate tycoon Ali Ağaoğlu, the Iranian businessmanReza Zarrab and the general manager of Halkbank (People’s Bank) Sü-leyman Aslan were taken into custody by the police in the light of thefindings of three different investigations launched by the Departmentof Organized Crimes and the Department of Financial Crimes in Is-tanbul. Yet a second wave of the anti-corruption operation was launchedsoon after by the Chief Public Prosecutor in IstanbulMuammerAkkaş on 25 December 2013. The second list contained thenames of several businessmen known for their closeness to the PrimeMinister Erdoğan, like the Saudi Arabian banker Yasin al-Qadi, FatihSaraç, Abdullah Tivnikli, Mustafa Latif Topbaş, Nihat Özdemir, OrhanCemal Kalyoncu  and Faruk Kalyoncu. However, Public ProsecutorAkkaş’s request to detain the suspects for the charges of constitutionand control of and membership to criminal conspiracy groups, threat,corruption, abuse of power and authority, tender fixing, money laun-dering and falsification of documents was declined.

role which it had until then occupied on equal termswith the AKP.

To sum up, we can affirm that the relationship betweenthe AKP and the Gülen community has always followeda rough, undulant path made up of ups and downs,and  recently it  has turned into a destructive “war” inwhich both parties use all their force and resources athand. But what exactly do these two movements repre-sent? What is the main reason behind their insatiabledesire for power?

The differences between the AKP and the Gülen community

At first sight, we may note that the two movementshave several fundamental characteristics in common: Is-lam, conservatism, nationalism, lifestyles.  Adding alsoa common political end to these characteristics, the ten-dency to see a harmonious blend between the two move-ments, especially in the second stage that we have justmentioned, prevails: in fact, for the majority of the pop-ulation in Turkey, the Gülen community meant AKP, orvice versa; however, the underlying truth was soon re-vealed. Today, we can look back in retrospect and listthe various reasons behind the rupture between the twomovements. In this article, we will limit ourselves to il-lustrate the reasons leading to the transformation of theiralliance in a full-scale “war,” which can be grouped underthree main categories:

1. Foreign policy2. Conflict of interest3. The Kurdish question

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The main field where the AKP has always glorified itsactions and challenged those who have criticized them iscertainly that of foreign policy. Nevertheless, foreign pol-icy has also been the very field where the governmenthas obtained the most doubtful and even disastrous re-sults. The fervent attempts by the AKP government, dur-ing its early period in power, to join the European Union,to maintain good relations with the United States despitethe government’s refusal of the 1 March 20036 motion,to improve relations with Israel and to implement the“zero problem policy” with all it neighbors, particularlySyria, were all considered “successful moves” as far asforeign policy was concerned. However, starting fromthe clash between Erdoğan and Peres during the WorldEconomic Forum held in Davos, all the moves listedabove were in no time at all transformed into weaponsturned against the government itself. The positions as-sumed by the AKP government, in light of the profoundchanges taking place in the Arab countries and the in-terventionist and aggressive policy that it adopted towardsthe revolts in Syria and Egypt, seriously harmed its rela-tions with the West. One of the main events7 which ledto the construction of a clear boundary between the Westand Erdoğan and his government was the spread of theallegations that Turkey had supported the radical Islamist

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6 It refers to the 1st March 2003 parliamentary motion, when Turkeyrefused to participate to the coalition leaded by the United States toinvade Iraq.

7 Other events which have had a negative effect on the relations be-tween the AKP government and the West are media censorship, Er-doğan’s attitude and the disproportionate use of force by the policeduring the events of Gezi Park, as well as accusations of corruption andbribery.

groups in Syria and the surrounding areas during theirattempts to bring down the government of Bashar al-Assad. Following the allegations that the governmenthad either helped or deliberately closed an eye to terroristgroups such as the al-Nusra Front and ISIS, notoriousthroughout the world for the brutality of their actions,the relations with the West, which had already been quitetense for a long period of time, almost reached a breakingpoint. And what position did the Gülen community ac-tually assume in the midst of all these developments tak-ing place between the AKP and the West? One of themain reasons behind the conflict between the two move-ments is concealed beneath the very fact that the Cemaatassumed quite a divergent position from that of the AKPin these matters of foreign policy.

The Gülen community had a rather skeptical attitudetowards the changes in foreign policy by the AKP gov-ernment. By criticizing the foreign policies of the AKP,which were totally detached from - and sometimes evenin conflict with - those of the West and its overtly inter-ventionist attitude toward Syria, Iraq and Egypt, the Ce-maat affirmed its pro-western position by insisting onthe adaptation of a common policy with the West. Takinga clear stance away from Erdoğan’s declarations that hewould block the negotiations for joining the EuropeanUnion and privilege the membership to the ShanghaiCooperation Organization instead, the Cemaat was, ina nutshell, quite visibly irritated by the AKP’s directionalshift in foreign policy. The same divergence of opinionmanifested itself also in the government’s foreign policyregarding Israel, though the reason was not Israel’s atti-tude toward Palestine, as one would expect. Despite the

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existence of a divergence of position between the AKPand the Gülen community regarding to the Palestinianquestion, one of the most important reasons for the di-verse nature of the relations that both parties have estab-lished with Israel lies in the difference in their approachestowards the Islamist organizations in the Middle East,which constitute a significant threat to Israel. Althoughit was evident that terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front and ISIS, with their centers of power locatedin the territories of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, were an-nouncing an imminent catastrophe for Israel, the gov-ernment never openly took a firm position against them;while the Cemaat, which had always stood quite detachednot only from the radical Islamists in the Middle Eastbut also from other communities and fraternities inTurkey who embrace fundamental Islamism, assumed arather clear and pro-western attitude as it would be imag-ined. In addition, a careful analysis of both its organiza-tional structure and development strategy will lead us tosee that such a coherent attitude on behalf of the Cemaatconceals the unsuitability of its internal structure to sup-port such a change of direction. The Cemaat, in fact,did not aim at active political participation in order toobtain power like the AKP but, instead, had several long-term objectives, and therefore did not retain such a quicktransformation necessary to its goals. In either case, sucha directional shift would not have been possible sincethe Cemaat was keeping a busy agenda with its educa-tional propaganda not only in Turkey but also abroad.At the beginning of the 90s, the Gülen communitystarted opening its own schools first in the Turkic re-publics and then in the Balkan countries, thus developing

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a network which extends all over the world without lim-iting their project only to the countries with a substantialMuslim community. Taking into consideration the factthat the population of the majority of the countries in-volved in the Cemaat’s “Global Expansion Project” arenot mainly Muslim and that a large part of the membersof the Cemaat were instructed, at least for some period,within the western education system, we can better graspthe difference between the community and the AKP;i.e. its reluctance to follow AKP’s footsteps in its choicesin foreign policy.

For the moment we’ll conclude our discussion of for-eign policy and focus on the conflict of interest whichconstitutes one of the main reasons leading to this warfor power. During the period when the alliance betweenthe AKP and the Cemaat worked as desired, the roles ofthe two protagonists of the political scene were veryclearly separated. Under the leadership of Erdoğan, theAKP won all the elections and obtained public consentwith quite high percentages and therefore could easilyjustify its policies aimed at weakening the “military tute-lage.” On the other hand, the Gülen community workedequally hard to reach the same goal by focusing mainlyon the police force and the jurisdiction, and it managedto incrementally enhance its network within the state’sinternal organization in direct proportion to the favorableresults it obtained. To put it briefly, the AKP was showingoff on stage while the Cemaat was directing the orchestra.The efficacy and the forcefulness of the alliance meantmore votes for the AKP and more penetration in crucialpositions within the state organization for the Cemaat,but both protagonists yearned for more power. A trans-

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formation began to occur when, exactly at this point,the AKP  revealed  its real intention to penetrate  intothe Cemaat’s sphere of action. While on the one handthe AKP started to build student housing facilities,schools and universities by means of the foundations un-der its control and authority, on the other hand, it alsointensified the charity actions through organizationsknown to be close to the party. The Gülen community in-terpreted the government’s desire to close down the der-shanes  as a clear demonstration of  an attempt toconquer its spheres of power. We can affirm that Erdoğan,who, together with his team of collaborators, thuslaunched a process of transforming the party into a wide-spread community, wished to gain full control of the Is-lamist movement not only in politics but also in thepublic sphere; whereas the Cemaat wanted to have moresay in the country’s politics and expand its share of thepower, and its members believed that the enormous pop-ular consent gained by the AKP weakened the commu-nity and limited its  participation – apart from a fewcommon policies – to the decision-making processesconcerning the economy, the foreign policy and a solutionfor the Kurdish question. In other words, the AKP startedto invade the public sphere using its political power,while the Cemaat was ambitiously penetrating more intothe political sphere in order to have more say within thebalance of power. When the desire to invade the respec-tive areas of action added up to the already existing dif-ferences of opinion which we previously mentioned, the“war for power” between the AKP and the Cemaat be-came inevitable for both. At this point, the Cemaat ded-icated all its force and resources to throw off or at least

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weaken the AKP government, while the AKP governmentused its political power first to eradicate the Cemaat fromthe state organization and then to weaken its networkswithin the civil society.

We will dedicate the final part of this article to thetension generated by the differences between the twoprotagonists of Turkey’s political scene in their approachestowards the solution of the Kurdish question in order toillustrate how this tension contributed to the weakeningof the AKP -  Cemaat alliance. Given the ideologicalcloseness between the two movements, it would be nat-ural to expect that the policies generated and imple-mented by both regarding the solution of the Kurdishquestion would follow parallel or common routes. But,on the contrary, the policies implemented by these allieshave often failed to maintain something like a parallel orcommon identity. The Gülen community wanted to takeadvantage of the government’s internal organization andcollocate the personnel trained according to its own prin-ciples within the governmental structures in order to ap-ply the “vision for a solution,” which would be set outand supervised by the Cemaat itself, to the Kurdish ques-tion. In this way, the Cemaat sought to resolve the con-flict by first labeling  the PKK  (Kurdistan WorkersParty), the KCK model (Group of Communities in Kur-distan), Abdullah Öcalan and perhaps even  the  BDP(Peace and Democracy Party) and the HDP (People’sDemocratic Party) as criminals and then neutralizingthem. From the community’s point of view, the solutionwould have been reached by means of a direct relation-ship, partially developed but yet to be improved, withthe Kurdish people.

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On the other hand, the AKP has maintained a muchmore flexible position concerning the solution to theKurdish question and almost totally abandoned its secu-ritarian policies by 2013. Since the policies adopted bythe AKP to solve the Kurdish solution are not part ofthe main arguments of this article, we will not proceedto a detailed analysis, but  we will limit ourselves toreassert that the AKP, compared to the Cemaat, has fol-lowed a more flexible and pragmatic polict overall. Weshould emphasize, however, an important aspect: the al-liance between the AKP and the  Cemaat did notbreak due to the divergence of opinion regarding the so-lution to the Kurdish question. We shall illustrate thispoint better: the main target of the MIT crisis was HakanFidan, the MIT Undersecretary and one of Erdoğan’smost trusted men, known and defined as his “right arm.”Fidan  was under accusation for his relations with thePKK. A quick step back to the events of 7 February2012 will bring us face to face with quite a differentscene than what we would expect: at that time, whilethe AKP government had an overly aggressively attitudetoward the Kurdish question, the Gülen community didnot seem in any way bothered by it. Furthermore, duringthe period which closely followed the events of 17 De-cember 2013, one of the most repeated arguments bythe mass media under the direct control and manipula-tion of the Cemaat focused on the government’s choicesof action in the “solution process” to the Kurdish ques-tion. The members of the community, including Fethul-lah Gülen himself, have pointed out on several occasionstheir support in favor of the Kurdish language rights ineducation. In the light of these facts, we can confirm

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that the true reason behind the conflict between the twomovements consisted in the splitting up of the positionswithin a new balance of power, which would emergeboth during and after the “solution process” regardingthe Kurdish question and not so much in the solutionitself. In short, the Kurdish question and its solution areonly parts of the enormous battle-zone in which the twomovements fight their “war for power”.

Before concluding, we shall briefly compare and con-trast the two movements’ respective visions of Islam. Themain perspective promoted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğanhimself and the “National Vision” movement, to whichhe used to belong, is based on engaging in a conflictagainst the West with the aid and support of the funda-mentalists. From his point of view, the principal causeof all the problems that the Muslim world is facing isthe West, and if the Muslim world could form a powerfulalliance and assume a strong and determined positionagainst the enemy, it could defeat it and permanentlyemancipate itself.  In other words, Sunni Islamists likeErdoğan see the West as the root of all evils that afflictthe Muslim world and do not hesitate to challenge theenemy the moment they feel strong enough to do so.On the contrary, the Gülen community challenges thearchaic structures of the Muslim world with the aid andsupport of the West. From this point of view, if we care-fully examine the very root of all the problems that theMuslim world is facing, we shall see nothing but theMuslims themselves, and this situation needs an inter-vention. In order to achieve a change, it is necessary toestablish a harmonious collaboration with the West andtake advantage of its resources.

Given such a fundamental divergence of opinion, it is

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extremely difficult for these two movements to form analliance and maintain a long-term co-operation. Takinga close look at the period during which the alliance be-tween the two parties followed a harmonious path, we’llcome across the statement, “I have taken off the NationalVision coat,” by Erdoğan and all the policies aimed atjoining the EU. In other words, we can affirm that thealliance worked to perfection to the extent to which theAKP applied the perspective of the Gülen community toits own actions. However, as soon as the AKP re-em-braced the National Vision perspective in its treatmentof the Freedom  Flotilla incident, the conflicts in theMiddle East and the Gezi Park protests, the AKP gov-ernment and the Gülen community inevitably came toa parting of the ways.

Translation Nazli Birgen

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The Gülen group’s daily Zaman (The Times, but also‘Prayer’– Namaz – when read backwards) is the mostprinted in Turkey with about one million copies perday. The group also owns the largest news agency inthe private sector Cihan (The Universe).1 Aksiyon (Action)is the most widely-published magazine at about 40,000copies. Gülen’s media empire also owns 11 national andinternational television channels.2 It’s hard to identifyand count the number of local television channels andradio stations that are directly or indirectly owned byGülen’s group in Turkey. “There are at least 200,” ac-cording to local media expert Erol Onderoglu.

In February 1979, the pseudo-scientific religiousmonthly Sızıntı (Infiltration) announced the Gülen

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An Old Friend, A New Enemy: e Fratricidal Struggle between

R.T. Erdoğan and the the Gülen Media Group

Ragıp Duran

1 Cihan Haber Ajansı, Cihan News Agency, publishes 450 articles forthe written press, 800 photos, 250 news reports with photos, 85 newsreports for television channels. Published in Turkish, English, Russianand Arabic, Cihan has correspondents in 35 countries and over 150 inTurkey. It has nine mobile studios for live reporting.

2 Samanyolu TV (The Milky Way), with branches in Europe and theUnited States: STV Haber (News), Mehtap Tv, Ebru TV, Yumurcak TV(for children), Küre TV, Hazar TV, Dünya TV (in Kurdish), MC TV.There is also Bugün TV, owned by Koza Holding who is very close toGülen.

Group’s objective: ‘winning hearts and minds,’ which isto say, influencing the masses and consequently increas-ing its presence in the media. Sızıntı claimed to be themonthly magazine of “love and tolerance.”

From Said-i Nursi to Fethullah Gülen

Originally from Turkish Kurdistan, Said-i Nursi(1876-1960) was the founder of a religious sect of whichFetullah Gülen was a devoted student. This Sunni sectattempted to reinterpret Islam on the basis of the Risale(pamphlets) i Nur (which means light but was also, atthe same time, Said’s name and the name of the villagehe was born in). In the over 6,000 pages written bySaid-i Nursi, he advocated for ‘An Era of Happiness’and indicated the path for achieving it. In practice, thismeant that young students would be educated in theNursi tradition, would infiltrate state institutions, and,in this way, acquire political power and ultimately con-trol of the state. A Turkic-Islamic version of Trotsky’s‘entrism,’ the Nursi tradition considers social sciencesof the utmost importance, especially for educating futurepoliticians. Professor Serif Mardin published an impor-tant study3 on Said-i Nursi, in which he estimated thatthe Nursi movement could be perceived as civil society’sreaction to Kemal Ataturk’s Jacobin-influenced secular-ism. In 1922, Said-i Nursi was already in political andpersonal conflict with the founder of the republic.

Fetullah Gülen, born in 1941 in the small village ofErzurum, was the self-educated son of an imam. He ded-

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3 Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Caseof Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, SUNY Press, 1989.

icated himself entirely to learning about Islam. After be-coming an official imam himself, he worked in a numberof cities in Turkey and was an active member of the As-sociation for the Battle against Communism (Erzurum,1963). A disciple of Said-i Nursi, he was often arrested,tried and sentenced for violating the republic’s secularprinciples. Gülen left Turkey following the January 28,1999 coup d’état, in which the army attempted to over-throw the elected government. He moved to the Saylors-burgh, Pennsylvania in the United States where he be-came a Sunni Islamist televangelist. Gülen nowbroadcasts at least six hours a day on his many televisionchannels. He writes books and articles, sends statementsto conferences organized and financed by the Brother-hood, and presents himself as a ‘man of inter-religious di-alogue,’ a ‘great teacher of soft Islam,’ etc.

In June 2008, Gülen was listed as one of the ‘100greatest intellectuals in the world’ in the American mag-azines Foreign Policy and Prospect. In 2003, the Americanweekly Time named him one of the ‘100 most influentialpersonalities’ in the world. Nonetheless, the Americanadministration does not share a unanimous opinion onMr. Gülen. Although a number of those close to theCIA have always supported him, Wikileaks publishedan extremely negative report about the head of theBrotherhood’s financial, religious and scholarly activities(The Stratfor Report; January 7, 2011). According tothese reports, Gülen is the head of a conglomerate ofcommercial and financial companies, schools, universi-ties and media groups, the total turnover of whichamounts to over US $3 billion. “They are present inmore than 40 countries,” claims Rusen Cakir, a corre-

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spondent for the daily newspaper Vatan and an experton political Islam. Part of the Turkish left believes thatthe Brotherhood is directly manipulated by the CIA,and that Gülen is a pawn used by Washington againstTurkish national interests.

For a long time, private schools and courses preparingstudents for university entrance exams in Turkey wereGülen’s bastion. Young high school graduates from ruralareas, primarily from impoverished social classes, remainthe sect’s preferred candidates. They are given full boardand lodging in the Maisons de Nur. In the context ofrigorous discipline, the young graduates are indoctri-nated in Said-i Nursi’s teachings. Prayers, fasting, theo-retical and theological courses are directed by the GreatBrothers and Great Sisters. The Brotherhood’s primaryfaculties are law, political science, sociology, communi-cation and management. It has its own private highschools and universities, but has also remained very ac-tive in the state education sector since the AKP cameto power (The Justice and Development Party led byRecep Tayyip Erdoğan, in power in Turkey since 2002).

The Hizmet triptych: academics, trade, and media

The Brotherhood is organized around three elements:academics, trade, and media. This triple dimension ismainly visible abroad. Thanks to the state political sup-port after Abdullah Gul was first prime minister in2002, then Foreign Minister from 2003 to 2007, andfinally president of the republic from 2007-2014, theBrotherhood has been able to set itself up in foreigncountries. These countries are mainly in Asia, Africa,

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the Middle East, as well as Latin America, where Wash-ington’s political influence is clearly visible. The Broth-erhood’s educational, trade and media activities are for-bidden in Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulfnations. Moscow does not wish to see ‘the Islamic threatunder American colours’ increase in their country.

The Gülen Movement, or, as they call themselves,‘The Service,’ establishes itself in a foreign country ini-tially through businessmen. Usually the owners ofSMBs, they differ from Western businessmen becausethey are Muslims. They form small communities pro-viding support services and open good quality schoolsthat cater to the children of presidents, prime ministers,interior ministers and chiefs of police, who are permittedto attend free of charge thanks to a (not-always-trans-parent or fair) scholarship system.

After setting up the first two elements – trade andeducation – foreign iterations of the Brotherhood ac-knowledge the great importance placed on relationswith the media in their host country. Journalists, re-porters and media owners are often invited on trips toTurkey or to other countries in which Gülen pursueshis activities. Foreign university administrators are alsoextremely important to Gülen. Researchers or profes-sors, who are not very well-known and in search ofscholarships or political-ideological support, are gener-ally encouraged to publish books on “the extraordinarylife of the Great Man, the Benefactor, Fetullah Gülen.”

Until 2013, Turkish governments and leaders includ-ing R.T. Erdoğan publicly boasted about the merits ofGülen’s schools abroad. “These schools teach the Turkishlanguage to young Africans and Asians,” claimed Oral

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Calislar, an old left-winger and one of Erdoğan’s newfriends, who writes for the daily newspaper Radikal,

The importance attributed to the media in Turkey isadditionally expressed in the organization of grand visitsto the United States, Africa and Asia for Turkish jour-nalists and correspondents. Some have even publishedbooks about ‘Master Fetullah’s exemplary schools.’ An-other characteristic of the Gülen Group’s activities isthe paying of journalists and university professors orexperts, and the presenting of small gifts for appearanceson television shows or articles in Gülen’s daily newspa-pers. It is also necessary to specify that media outletsowned by Gülen got on quite well with left-wing andopposition journalists in the days of the coalition gov-ernment (before 2002) when the military maintained adegree of control over politics and the media in Turkey.

In order to form high quality cadres according totheir pre-established plans and programmes, the Broth-erhood sends its favourite university and high schoolgraduates to American universities, such as Harvardand other East Coast universities, to complete theirMasters or PhDs. For example, Ekrem Dumanli, theeditor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Zaman for overten years, as well as his former deputy Eyup Can, noweditor-in chief of the daily paper Radikal, both attendeduniversity in Massachusetts thanks to scholarships pro-vided by the Gülen movement.

Blitz against the State apparatus

The administration of the police and the judiciaryare additional priorities of the Brotherhood. A few hun-

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dred young police officers, judges and prosecutors – allGülen scholarship winners – have studied at Americanuniversities or attended courses at private Americanschools. The investigative journalist Ahmet Sik was ar-rested and tried in March 2011 for an unpublishedbook about Gülen entitled The Imam’s Army. He re-vealed this network when he was released a year afterhis arrest. He said, “I was first of all slandered by Gülen’smedia, arrested by Gülen’s police officers, charged byGülen’s prosecutors and finally Gülen’s judges decidedto sentence me.’

This case is symbolic as it reveals the capacity andthe power of Gülen’s group within the state organizationbefore 2013. The journalists, police officers, prosecutorsand judges criticised by Ahmet Sik were all, at the time,fervent supporters of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Er-doğan and there is no doubt that this arrest, as well asthe arrests of many hundreds of others (Ergenekon, Ba-lyoz, Oda TV cases etc.),4 were accomplished with gov-ernment’s agreement and support.

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4 Hundreds of members of the armed forces, ranging from generalsto ordinary soldiers, were arrested, tried and sentences in the Ergenekoncase (opened in 2008), and the Balyoz case (opened in 2010). Abouttwenty journalists – among them Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener – anduniversity professors were the accused in the Oda TV trial, which startedin 2008. All were accused of fomenting a coup d’état against the Er-doğan government. Throughout the hearings, held in the Appeals Courtfor Special Cases, defence lawyers repeated over and over that the evi-dence was false, that the right to defence had been violated, presentingto the court technical and scientific reports from famous national andinternational centres. Almost all those charged were initially sentencedto long prison sentences, including life, but were all released after De-cember 17. ErdoğanErdoğan’s chief advisor, Yalcin Akdoğan, explainedthis change in attitude and this legal about turn, saying “The GülenMovement prepared an ambush for our national army.”

In a bizarre, amusing twist of fate, these same police-men were arrested by Erdoğan’s police officers after De-cember 17, 2013, under accusations of espionage relatedto illegal wire-taps of ministers and businessmen closeto Erdoğan that were released to the foreign media.They were also accused of fomenting a coup d’état. Theranks of prosecutors and judges who had organized op-erations between December 17 and 25, 2013, were alsosignificantly reduced. In other cases, they were sentaway to provinces far from Anatolia.

Another interesting case involved the former chief ofpolice Hanefi Avci, previously close to the Brotherhoodbut who, in August 2010, published a book Haliç’teYasayan Simonlar (The Simons of the Golden Horn) de-nouncing illegal organizing by Brotherhood memberswithin the police force. He was sentenced to 15 yearsin prison for having been a member of an extreme left-wing armed organization (Devrimci Karargâh- Revolu-tionary Headquarters). Avci was accused of torture by anumber of left-wing and extreme left-wing militants.“When law becomes a political instrument, anythingbecomes possible, in particular all kinds of injustice canbe imposed,” said Umit Kocasakal, the President of theBar in Istanbul.

In both cases – Şık and Avci – the Brotherhood hadwanted to teach a lesson to those daring to denouncethe Gülen movement. The message was a clear one: ‘Ifyou write a book against me, I will have you imprisoned.If you report my organization, I can present a chief ofpolice as an extreme left-wing terrorist!’

Gülen’s media played a decisive role in both cases, aswell as in other arrests and trials generally illegal and il-

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legitimate. This always works in the same way. Firstthere is an allegation disguised as serious informationposted on a not very well-known website. The followingday, Gülen’s media reports and develops the article, thusproviding evidence that is generally invented and there-fore fraudulent. False documents and false CDs are thenpublished.

Newspapers and journalists who change side

The daily newspaper Taraf (The Party, founded inDecember 2007), played an almost-decisive rolethroughout this campaign of allegations aimed at thoseopposing the government and Gülen’s movement.Launched as a liberal daily supporting the government,Taraf was the first to publish documents, mostly falseones, compromising ‘putchist soldiers,’ opposition jour-nalists and anti-government or anti-Gülen bureaucrats.Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı, a former correspondent forTaraf, and then for the pro-Erdoğan daily newspaperSabah, admitted in July 2014 that Taraf “was financedand run by Gülenists and was a paper at the service ofthe Brotherhood’s causes.” Kütahyalı is the typical sym-bol of the new generation of journalists with very fewprofessional capabilities, knowledge, experience or ed-ucation, but with close relations with those in power.He was presented by the powerful and by Erdoğan as agood journalist. Celalettin Can, editor of the bi-monthlypublication Tukenmez (Left) said, “I was with this youngman in a television studio when, during an advertisingbreak, his mobile phone rang. He answered addressingthe caller as ‘Papa’. I thought it was his father. When

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the conversation was over he told me he had been speak-ing to Prime Minister Erdoğan!”

Using the medium-sized publishing house Alkim, theGülen Movement was able to persuade well-known lib-eral left-wing journalists such as Ahmet Altan, YaseminÇongar and Alev Er to work for Taraf. Strictly pro-Er-doğan and anti-army in the beginning, the daily changedits allegiance a little before the December 17 crisis, be-coming the mouthpiece for the Gülen Movement,which had already begun to oppose Erdoğan. “Tarafwas the Gülenists Trojan Horse in the media,” claimedthe media critic Daghan Irak. Oral Calislar was Taraf’seditor-in-chief for a short period of time between Feb-ruary and April 2013. He later admitted that “Tarafwas a newspaper created to achieve a series of operationsfavouring Gülen.”

Another representative of this new kind of journalismin Taraf, Mehmet Baransu distinguished himself for hisfervour in serving ‘justice.’ He had received a large suit-case containing files, CDs and documents implicatingthe military and, accompanied by a photographer fromthe newspaper, solemnly handed this suitcase over tothe chief prosecutor at the Palace of Justice in Istanbul.A gallant ceremony accompanied the hand-off, whichwas reported the following day on Taraf’s front page.Later, after December 17, Baransu turned away fromErdoğan and was subseuqently arrested and then releasedby Erdoğan’s police in August 2014.

Additionally, two symbolic cases regarding theGülenist press involve Emre Uslu and Onder Aytaç.The former was a police officer trained in intelligencewho later wished to become a university professor and,

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due to bad luck, became a correspondent for Taraf.More a Nostradamus than a Pulitzer, Uslu initially pub-lished pro-Erdoğan propaganda before becoming anti-Erdoğan. The latter became an instructor at the PoliceAcademy after completing a PhD in Great Britain.Close to Gülen, Aytaç was dismissed from Taraf forcalling for the execution of Abdullah Ocalan, the Kur-dish leader imprisoned since 1999.

A herald for the Gülen media group, the daily news-paper Zaman, founded in 1986, was initially a smallnewspaper and the explicit ‘voice’ of the Gülen Broth-erhood. Its editor-in-chief, Ekrem Dumanlı, tried totransform this small daily newspaper into a great work-ing-class paper of Islamic observance. He organizedmeetings with readers all over the country and trainingseminars during which experienced and specialized jour-nalists taught courses for the paper’s young correspon-dents. Zaman’s sales at kiosks never rose to more than20,000 copies. However, Zaman claimed net salesamounting to a million copies a day. The managementcreated a semi-fictitious subscription method consistingof printing and distributing over a million copies everyday. The Brotherhood is organized in a way that hasthe community’s wealthy members pay a monthly sumthat is the equivalent to at least 30 or 50 subscriptionsfor newspapers. Every day an enforcer working for richGülenists goes to a corner kiosk and collects a packageof between 30 and 50 newspapers and distributes themto fictitious subscribers. Every morning, one can see apackage of three to five copies of Zeman outsides shops,residences or offices.

Zaman’s editorial policies have certainly greatly

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changed since December 17. Previously a fervent sup-porter of Erdoğan, Zaman has now become the mostradical of opponents to the AKP’s power. What is in-teresting is that with the exception of the opinions oftwo correspondents, Zaman has never expressed seriousself-criticism in order to explain such a radical shift.

A Fratricidal struggle between the former Siamese twins

Erdoğan and Gülen behaved like Siamese twins be-tween 2002 and 2013. A year after its founding, theAKP, which had won the 2002 general election, neededGülen’s cadres to run the country. Initially, understand-ing between the two partners was almost perfect. Therewere however some disagreements, primarily arisingfrom structural divergences as well as ideological differ-ences. And for the Brotherhood what mattered waspower. It is so flexible that it even managed to get alongwith Bulent Ecevit (1925-2006), a social democrat whowas prime minister five times between 1974 and 2002.

From the start, Gülen and Erdoğan did not agree ona number of important issues, such as foreign policywith the United States, Israel or Iran. Gülen was pro-America, pro-Israel and anti-Iran. Erdoğan was not au-tomatically anti-America, anti-İsrael or pro-Iran, butthere were, however, significant nuances in the under-standing, analysis and behaviour of these two leaders.The Kurdish problem and the European Union werealso subjects on which they did not agree.

The first minor – but public – incident betweenGülen and Erdoğan concerned the Mavi Marmara de-

bacle in May 2010. Erdoğan wanted to indirectly attackIsrael, sending a ship of humanitarian aid to Gaza.Gülen criticized this decision in two lengthy interviewspublished by the New York Times and the Wall StreetJournal. He wrote, “One should have asked the state ofIsrael for authorization.” Nine Turkish citizens werekilled by Israeli commandos when they boarded thevessel while she was still in international waters.

As Erdoğan became more and more powerful, espe-cially after the constitutional referendum held in Sep-tember 2010 in which he won 58% of the votes, theBrotherhood demanded greater power. The prime min-ister instead wished to lessen the Brotherhood’s powerwithin the state. His first decision was to close theprivate schools and courses held to prepare for universityentrance exams. However, Erdoğan was not yet braveenough to directly oppose the Brotherhood. Instead ofclearly stating that these schools were centres for edu-cating young Gülenists, he chose to ‘reform privateschools and nationalize them.’

Finally, on December 17, 2013, Gülenist policemen,prosecutors and judges accused Erdoğan, his son, fourministers and their sons, as well as many other AKPbureaucrats and businessmen of corruption and bribery.This was the last straw! Characterized by Erdoğan as acoup d’état, this operation involved the Gülenists takingrevenge on the AKP and was aimed at discrediting theentire Erdoğan regime, whose leader and close support-ers had become extremely rich with illegal and illegiti-mate financial operations. According to wiretap tran-scripts published online – which resulted in YouTubeand Twitter being banned, once again illegally – and

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also published by certain opposition newspapers, Er-doğan has set up a mafia-style regime to control all themedia, falsifying documents that compromised himand to organize takeover bids to enrich those near anddear to him, led by his own son Bilal.

Erdoğan’s reaction was harsh and oppressive. Hebranded the Brotherhood ‘a parallel state,’ as assassins,5

and traitors to the nation. “We will destroy their dens,”he said.

One must add that both Erdoğan and Gülen laterexpressed regret. “We gave them everything they wanted.We were rather naive,” said Erdoğan. “We helped thedevil because he was dressed like an angel”, said Gülen.

The bitter conflict was started by the two media con-glomerates: Erdoğan’s and Gülen’s. Endless attacks andslurs filled the headlines. Members of the armed forces,journalists and others already sentenced were releasedbecause Erdoğan needed new allies in his battle againstthe Brotherhood. The vast majority of his people hadbeen illegally and illegitimately arrested, charged andsentenced at the time with Erdoğan’s agreement andsupport. But today, media owned by Erdoğan and Gülenappear to have forgotten this collusion.

In conclusion, the media outlets owned by Erdoğanand Gülen remained united from 2002 until 2013.Gülen wished to impose himself on the prime minister,while real power was firmly in Erdoğan’s hands. For the

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5 Hashishin or Assassins: Members of a Shiite sect active during theMiddle Ages in Persia, the Assassins with their criminal methodscaused Crusaders and Mongols to tremble, fighting against bothRichard the Lionheart and Saladin Ayyubi. The black legend surround-ing them still exists today.

moment, Erdoğan is in the lead of this fratricidal strug-gle. Zaman’s sales have fallen a little, but the Brother-hood’s television channels have become a good form ofopposition in the eyes of Erdoğan’s opponents.

According to the journalist Ahmet Şık, the author ofa book about the Gülen Brotherhood entitled L’Em-buscade: Les Nouveaux Maîtres de l’Etat, “Erdoğan,whether prime minister or president of the republic,wants to retain political power, while Gülen’s objectiveis to be at the very heart of the state’s power.” So, whileGülen may certainly have lost the battle, “he is stillvery powerful in Turkey and abroad,” wrote Zaman’scorrespondent Professor İhsan Dagi. He did not specify,however, whether Gülen is still supported by Washing-ton.

Translation Francesca Simmons Pomeroy

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Turkey’s image in the world is currently undeservedly ter-rible with regards to freedom of the press. It would be ex-tremely naïve to think that this problem has only domesticroots. […] [The AK-Party] government must take this smearcampaign very seriously.1

With carrot-and-stick tactics, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cur-rently controls most of the media outlets and brainwashespeople with false information. […] Since Turkey has beenpolarized by Erdoğan, his voters never look at critical mediacoverage, and even if they do, they do not believe it. Theycan explain away everything with conspiracy theories. […]Erdoğan’s propaganda machine is so strong that it has con-vinced half the population that Erdoğan is the leader of theworld. 2

The above are excerpts from Ihsan Yilmaz’s bi-weeklycolumn in Today’s Zaman. The first was plucked from an

Shifting the community press: a brief examination of Gülen-affiliated

papers Zaman and Today’s Zaman

Joshua Carney

1 Ihsan Yilmaz, Today’s Zaman, 11 May 2011.http://mobile.todayszaman.com/search.action?category=&dt=2011&

words=/-/C4/-/B0hsan/-/20Yilmaz2 Ibdem, 14 August 2014.http://mobile.todayszaman.com/search.action?category=&dt=2014&

words=/-/C4/-/B0hsan/-/20Yilmaz

extended series of articles in which he defended the rul-ing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve KalkınmaPartisi - AK-Party) and its leader Tayyip Erdoğan againstclaims of censorship and media manipulation in Turkey.The second – of more recent vintage – reveals a shift inattitude related to the country’s most mesmerizing newsstory of the past year: the brutal parting of ways betweenErdoğan’s AK-Party and the Gülen Community.3

Our brush with this byzantine story will attempt toexplain the gap between these two comments with amodest look at two Gülen-affiliated newspapers: howthey came about and the content that distinguishes them;their relations with other media groups; some of their ed-itorial limits; and, finally, how they have reacted to Er-doğan’s self-proclaimed “witch hunt” against the GülenMovement.4

Taking shape

The Gülen-affiliated Feza Publishing house was estab-lished in 1986 and the daily Zaman, which went to presson 3 November under the editorship of Fehmi Koru, wasits first publication. According to a former writer for thepaper, Zaman was originally conceived as an alternativeto the preponderance of “fake news” in a media environ-

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3 Members of the group tend to refer to it simply by the Turkish wordcemaat, meaning “community.” It is also often referred to as the “GülenMovement,” a neutral term that I will use interchangeably with “GülenCommunity” here. Critics of the movement often refer to its membersas “Fethullahcılar” in Turkish or “Gülenists” in English.

4 See TZ Staff, “Erdoğan says his gov’t will carry out ‘witch hunt’”,Today’s Zaman, 11 maggio 2014. http://www.todayszaman.com/news-347529-Erdoğan-says-his-govt-will-carry-out-witch-hunt.html

ment characterized by monopolies and vested, highly sec-ular interests.5 Initially targeted narrowly at the GülenCommunity, it had a “rebirth” of sorts when a numberof Gülen’s followers returned from the US after receivingprofessional journalism training.6 Led by Ekrem Du-manlı, who took the helm in 2001, this group focusedon making the paper competitive with leaders in theTurkish market by improving layout, content, and qual-ity of coverage. The results were clear, and its circulationfigures began to rise steadily.

But this rise was not without controversy. Zaman’s ap-proach to distribution is unique among Turkish papers:it employs a subscription model that includes both homeand office delivery. As the paper overtook leading dailiesPosta and Hürriyet around 2007, critics began to allegethat this model inflates the paper’s actual reach, sinceGülen-affiliated organizations often purchase bulk sub-scriptions and then distribute the paper for free.7 For pa-pers such as Posta and Hürriyet, which rely heavily onadvertising revenue for survival, circulation is one of themost important factors in selling ads. Their readershipconsists entirely of consumers who make a consciouschoice to purchase the paper from newsstands on a daily

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5 From an anonymous interview conducted in 2007 by Joshua Hen-drick. See Hendrick, Joshua D., Gülen: the ambiguous politics of marketIslam in Turkey and the world, New York University Press, New York,2013, p.184.

6 Ibidem, pp. 184-185.7 This claim has been addressed and perhaps too easily dismissed by

Bozkurt Abdullah, “Controversy over dailies’ circulation figures”, Today’sZaman, 28 March 2010, http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-205623-controversy-rages-over-dailies-circulation-figures.html. It isalso addressed by Sözeri Ceren - Güney Zeynep, The political economyof the media in Turkey: a sectoral analysis, collana TESEV di studi medi-atici sul programma di democratizzazione. TESEV, Istanbul, 2011.

basis and this, they argue, is a markedly different behav-ior than that of subscribers. While their complaints wereultimately dismissed by an investigatory commission, itwould seem that advertisers agree, as these papers, bothowned by the Doğan8 Media Group, still top the chartsin terms of advertising revenue.9 Zaman started with andstill maintains a relatively modest income from advertis-ing, lending credence to the notion that the paper’s mo-tives are somewhat different than its solely profit-orientedcompetitors. Such questions notwithstanding, the paperis now the unrivaled leader in terms of print circulationin Turkey,10 and it is one of two prominent sites of con-tact between the Gülen Community and the Turkishpublic.11

The latter point is important because organizations al-leged to be associated with the Gülen Movement areoften wary of revealing such ties.12 Zaman’s self-presen-tation acknowledges – but does not aggrandize – its linkwith the movement. In addition to covering major newsstories in Turkey and around the world, its writers reporton matters of particular interest to the community, suchas the Turkish Olympiad (an annual pageant displaying

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8 On the figure of Aydın Doğan, great Turkish media entrepreneur,see the analysis of Stefano Maria Torelli, “Turkish media have a name:Aydin Dogan,” 28 May 2013. http://arabmediareport.it/i-media -turchi-have-a-name-aydin-dogan /

9 Sözeri Ceren - Güney Zeynep, 2001.10 For the week ending 24 August 2014 Zaman boasted a circulation

of 946,999, over twice that of its next closest competitor, Posta at416,209. Source: yaysat.com.tr.

11 The other, Samanyolu TV, is addressed elsewhere in this collectionby Fabio Vicini in his essay “Representing Islam: Cinematographic Pro-ductions of the Gülen Movement”, p.48.

12 See Hendrick’s (2013) ethnographic analysis of the “strategic am-biguity” employed by the community both in Turkey and abroad.

the Turkish language skills learned by students in Gülen-affiliated schools from around the world), and the finan-cial standing of movement-aligned Bank Asya13. Whileother papers in Turkey might also cover these stories, theytend to do so far less prominently. The paper contains awealth of reporting and commentary dealing directlywith Gülen and the movement as well,14 including state-ments (or, on the web site, videos) from Gülen himself,reportage, and opinion columns often earmarked at de-fending the reputation of Gülen or the community.15

Zaman works in coordination with Feza’s Cihan NewsAgency (Cihan Haber Ajansı - CHA), a news gathererthat maintains correspondents worldwide and that hasgrown to be one of the top news outfits in Turkey. Start-ing in the mid 1990s, Zaman also began to go global,and the paper now has eight international editions em-ploying a variety of publication and language strategies.16

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13 On the Turkish Olympics and Bank Asya see also the Hendrickessay “Corrupted Speech: The Movement, the Party, and the Break-down of the New Turkey”, p. 23.

14 For example, the archives of Zaman and Turkey’s other leadingdaily Hürriyet reveal that, in 2002, the former had 1484 stories contain-ing the term “Gülen,” while the latter had 223. This trend is consistentthroughout the archives of both papers, though there has been an up-surge of Gülen stories in Hürriyet since the onset of Erdoğan’s “witchhunt.”

15 Şahin Alpay’s 2012 piece “The Community’s Shield,” provides oneexample. Alpay makes reference to what he calls “conspiracy theories”regarding the Gülen Movement’s alleged infiltration of the police forceand its involvement in recent, prominent legal cases (the Ergenekonand the KCK trials). He then turns to writer Nazlı Ilıcak’s book on thetopic, summarizing and applauding what he calls her successful dis-missal of such allegations. Alpay Şahin, “Cemaat kalkanı” (Communitydefence), Zaman, 24 February 2012. http://www.zaman.com.tr/full-name/cemaat-kalkani_1244785.html

16 These are: Zaman Amerika (America), Zaman Azerbaycan (Azer-baijan), Zaman Avusturya (Austria), Zaman Avrupa (Europe), Zaman

New kid in town

In January of 2007, the English-language daily Today’sZaman (TZ) began its print life as the second major Eng-lish-language paper in Turkey under the editorship of Bü-lent Keneş. Its rival, the Hürriyet Daily News (HDN),17

had been around since 1961 and had, since 2000, beenpart of the aforementioned Doğan Media Group,Turkey’s largest media company. TZ quickly outflankedits competitor in the print category, and has progressivelyincreased its lead in terms of print circulation in the in-tervening years, a period that has seen both papers’ fig-ures rise considerably.18 That said, HDN consistentlygarners more web traffic, boasting a global rank that isabout twice that of its rival.19

This rivalry is important because these papers are themost prominent news sources presenting Turkey to thediplomatic and international business sectors in Turkey– as well as to the broader global community – and theyrepresent divergent media cultures and ideological mis-

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Bulgaristan (Bulgaria), Zaman Kazakistan (Kazakstan), Zaman Ro-manya (Romania), Zaman Türkmenistan (Turkmenistan). Some, such asZaman Amerika and Avrupa, are printed in Turkish, others, such asZaman Azerbaycan and Kazakistan, are printed in the native languageof their country, but have multi-lingual web sites.

17 The paper was actually called the Turkish Daily News at this time.It was rebranded as Hürriyet Daily News in 2008.

18 Based on queries of www.yaysat.com.tr, and medyatava.com forthe third week of February for each year between 2007 and 2014. Forthe week ending 24 August 2014, TZ had a weekday print circulationof 8,748, and HDN 5,614.

19 Based on alexa.com site comparison performed on 30 August 2014.TZ had a global rank of 40,290, while HDN had a global rank of21,206 in a system where lower numbers indicate a higher rank. Rankswithin the US, Turkey, and the UK—the three top audiences for theweb sites—showed a similar relationship.

sions. An example of this can be seen in their differingapproach to the highly charged 2007 presidential elec-tions. TZ was careful in its packaging of news and opin-ion for the Turkey novice-taking time to providecontextual information about the country’s history andthe nature of the electoral process. HDN, meanwhile,made far fewer overtures of this sort, and sometimes sim-ply included translations of columns from its associatedTurkish dailies as content for its readers. On the otherhand, HDN displayed a far greater ideological breadththan TZ, including opinion pieces from supporters anddetractors of all parties in the election. TZ’s opinionpages were striking in their uniform critique of the op-position Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet HalkPartisi - CHP) and their endorsement of the AK-Party.20

It was likely in response to the competition that HDNunderwent a makeover in 2008, switching to its currentname and offering a few more amenities for the readerwho is still learning about Turkey. Despite this, both dis-tinctions continue to be visible in the papers, as TZ con-sistently does more to court foreign readers and HDNconsistently has a greater ideological spectrum in its opin-ion columns.

Tilting Windmills

In trying to distinguish themselves, columnists at TZhave made much of the differences between the media

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20 For further details on this discrepancy see Carney Josh, “Distillingideologies: opinion page strategies for explaining the Turkish electionsto foreigners”, paper presented at the 6th International Symposium onthe Communication of the Millennium, Istanbul, Turkey, 14 May 2008.

cultures of their parent companies. For example, writersİhsan Yılmaz and Yavuz Baydar, who have been with thepaper from the start, have both taken up the issue of pressfreedom as a recurrent theme in their columns and, upuntil 2013, their work was marked by a consistent thesis:despite the real dangers represented by imprisonment ofjournalists, the primary problem with the press in Turkeyis not the AK-Party and government repression but,rather, a corrupt media culture most clearly representedby the Doğan Media Group.21 In the heyday of good re-lations between the Gülen Movement and the AK-Party,Yılmaz and Baydar were able to make much of the clien-telist model that pervades the Turkish media sector,22 not-ing that Doğan Holding, the media group’s parentcompany, had reaped major profits from its interests inother sectors by providing coverage in keeping with thewishes of previous administrations.

It is of interest that these columns appeared during aperiod in which Zaman received robust state advertisingfrom the Directorate General of Press Advertisement(BIK - Basın İlan Kurumu) tasked with distributing suchfunds.23 The Doğan Group, meanwhile, had been threat-ened by the government with crippling fines in 2008 and2009, and some of its writers had reacted with com-

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21 See, for example the following columns published on TZ by Ylmaz19/11/2008, 15/11/2010, 9/3/2011, 3/5/2011, 5/5/2011, 23/2/2011 eYilmaz 12/8/2007, 15/3/2009, 4/10/2009, 27/4/2011, 6/5/2011,11/5/2011 and Baydar 19/11/2008, 15/11/2010, 9/3/2011, 3/5/2011,5/5/2011, 23/2/2011.

22 For more on this model, see Christensen Christian, “Concentrationof ownership, the fall of unions and government legislation in Turkey”,Global Media and Communication, 3(2), 2007, pp.179-199.

23 For precise figures for 2010, see Sözeri & Güney, 2011, pp. 61-21.

plaints about media freedom. Though the fines were al-legedly for tax violations, they were almost certainly Er-doğan’s retaliation for Doğan Media’s coverage of theLighthouse investigation-a corruption scandal in Ger-many that potentially implicated AK-Party members inTurkey as well.24 Critiques of Doğan (and either overt orimplied defenses of Erdoğan) were ubiquitous across theFeza family in these years, and not only in the opinioncolumns. For example, in September of 2008, Zamanfeatured a long piece detailing the corrupt methods bywhich Doğan allegedly entered the media world and de-crying his hypocrisy in complaining about governmentoversight.25 This piece was continued in an even longerexpose in the Feza weekly magazine Aksiyon.

Taken on their own, the arguments leveled againstDoğan and the model his company represents were bothinsightful and in line with critiques and suggestions by ahost of media critics and scholars.26 What is striking,however, is that their presentation in Zaman and TZtended to be highly selective. Employed with panache inorder to silence critics of governmental, policial, or judi-cial interference with freedom of the press, such argu-ments consistently underplayed other real dangers to themedia environment in Turkey, instead painting Doğan

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24 For further information see Cornell Svante E., “As Dogan yields,Turkish media freedom plummets”, Turkey Analyst, 3(1), 2010 andHendrick essay in this volume, p. 23.

25 Zaman Staff, “Aydın Doğan, nasıl medya patron oldu?” [HowAydın Doğan could became a media entrepreneur?], Zaman, 16 Sep-tember 2008. http://www.zaman.com.tr/gundem_aydin-dogan-nasil-medya-patronu-oldu_738847.html

26 See, for example, Christensen, 2007; Sözeri - Güney, 2011 andKurban Dilek - Sözeri Ceren, Policy suggestions for free and independentmedia in Turkey, TESEV, Istanbul, 2013.

as the key culprit, ironic at a time when some of his pa-pers had made a choice to set aside the clientelist normthat curries government favor and, instead, actually re-ported on a burgeoning scandal. Furthermore, the uni-formity and repetition of such arguments suggests acoordinated effort across the Zaman family to instill aparticular line of discourse.

Limiting expression

Indeed, when it comes to key issues, the sanctionedline of discourse in Zaman papers can turn out to be alltoo clear.

Andrew Finkel, a journalist with a vast internationalpublishing portfolio and over two decades of experiencein Turkey, was one of TZ’s most prominent columnists.He had joined the paper at the outset, apparently withthe understanding that his “non-affiliated” voice wouldadd necessary depth to the paper’s lineup and bolster itscredibility. On 7 April 2011, however, he was fired afterpenning a column that TZ editor Bülent Keneş refusedto print.27 The topic was a series of police raids on mediaoutlet Oda TV and an associated publishing house.Ahmet Şık, a journalist who had been working on a bookabout alleged infiltration into the police force by theGülen Movement, had been arrested and his book con-fiscated. Finkel argued that such measures were improper,tacitly giving credence to the rumors that the prosecutor

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27 HDN printed the piece on the same day. Finkel Andrew, “Adilemma”, Hürriyet Daily News, 7 April 2011, http://www.hurriyetdai-lynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=a-dilemma-2011-04-07

and police in charge of the case were associated with theGülen Community. Days later, Keneş printed an expla-nation for the firing, saying he believed Finkel had inad-vertently come under the influence of “strong and darkpropaganda,” and reaffirming that the paper’s editorialline admits for only so much criticism.28

While Finkel was avowedly not a “community mem-ber,” even those who more closely identify with themovement can have trouble with its media outlets. On26 August, long-time Zaman and TZ columnist HüseyinGülerce resigned from the papers. This news came as abombshell to many because Gülerce, who had worked atZaman for 25 years, including a stint as general publish-ing manager, was often informally referred to as the“spokesperson for the community” based on the manycolumns he wrote explaining the nature of the movementand the teachings of Gülen. Gülerce’s work from the pastyear suggests that he struggled deeply with his decision:some columns criticize Erdoğan and implore the (then)PM to give up his attacks on the community; othersspeak in more general terms about the author’s hopes fora moral and respectful kind of journalism. His last col-umn came on 14 May and, on 1 July he Tweeted that hewas supporting Erdoğan in the presidential elections. Inthe wake of his resignation, Gülerce gave a series of in-terviews with the news site Internet Haber,29 hinting atthe deep reservations that had been building up for him

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28 Keneş Bülent, “Why was Andrew Finkel fired?”, Today’s Zaman,11 April 2011,

h t t p : / / w w w. t o d a y s z a m a n . c o m / c o l u m n i s t / b u l e n t -kenes_240737_why-was-andrew-finkel-fired.html

29 The interview is vailable at the following URL: http://www.inter-nethaber.com/huseyin-gulerce/

since the dispute between the AK-Party and the commu-nity began in 2013. Ultimately, he said, Zaman had cometo resemble the deeply anti-government paper Sözcü andhe simply couldn’t imagine working there any more.

Shifting loyalties

The U-turn in rhetoric in Zaman and TZ has indeedbeen marked, though there were clear signs of discontentbuilding up to the watershed moment. Prior to June2013’s Gezi Park protests, numerous columnists had ex-pressed reservations about various actions by Erdoğan:his condemnation and the subsequent destruction of afriendship monument between Turkey and Armenia in2011; his repeated advice that women should have threechildren and his strong statements against cesarean sec-tions and abortions; his attacks one of TV’s most populardramas in 201230; and his suggestion that those whodrink alcohol lead worthless lives. These had all receivedsome degree of reaction among writers for Zaman, butthis was usually tempered with a statement to the effectthat the PM tended to act passionately and that he sim-ply needed to be more cautious.

With Gezi Park, the statements became stronger.Gülerce, for example, spoke openly about how disap-pointing Erdoğan’s behavior was, though he made sure

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30 On the importance of television drama in Turkey and the weightthey have in the creation of social trends see Joshua Carney, MarwanM. Kraidy, Lea Nocera, Stephen M. Torelli “The Turkish Touch. Neo-ottoman Hegemony and Turkish Television in the Middle East”, ArabMedia Report, Oct. 3, 2014 http://arabmediareport.it/the-turkish-touch-neo-ottoman-hegemony-and-turkish-televsion-in-the-middle-east/

to balance this with a statement that many of the pro-testers were clearly professional agitators.31 That said,Gezi Park did not mark the definitive souring of rela-tions. Rather, that came in November, when Erdoğantouted a long-rumored parliamentary bill that wouldspell the end of the dershane(s) – a system of private, stan-dardized test preparatory schools that had become ubiq-uitous in Turkey since the 1990s. The Gülen Movementwas the major player in the dershane market, and the lawaffected not only the movement’s finances but also its po-tential to recruit new members. At this point bothZaman and TZ started printing pieces openly question-ing the government and its motives. Despite the clearshift in tone, over the next month many of the editorialpieces still held out hope for a reconciliation. As Er-doğan’s rhetoric became harsher, however, so did that inthe Zaman papers. The PM’s acceptance and eventualadoption of the term “parallel state” to describe theGülen Movement seems to have been one of the emo-tional triggers for a final break.32

Setting aside the question of whether the Gülen Com-munity is directly responsible for the corruption investi-gations targeting the AK-Party that broke out in

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31 See his 2013-06-04 and 2013-06-06 columnshttp://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail.action;jsessionid=3NaGm

rzox0aFes+BSN4yRByq?newsId=317383&columnistId=0;http://www.todayszaman.com/search.action?category=&dt=2013&words=G/-/C3/-/BClerce

32 See, for example, Gülerce TZ - 2014-12-17. This term, and its al-ternate, “parallel structure” have become the key epithets used by theAK-Party against the Gülen movement in the wake of the Decembercorruption investigations.

http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail.action;jsessionid=3NaGmrzox0aFes+BSN4yRByq?newsId=334287&columnistId=0

December 2013 – it seems highly likely that Gülen sym-pathizers were involved at various levels, but the extentand integration of such involvement is impossible to stateat this point – the reaction in the Zaman papers to theseand subsequent events was an all-out attack on the AK-Party government. As former allies quickly became ene-mies, both the content and tone of news andcommentary changed radically. In the wake of the re-sounding AK-Party victory in the 30 March municipalelections, and the ever-increasing measures by the gov-ernment to stamp out the so-called “parallel state,” therewas a shift to a more apparently “objective” tone in newsreporting and a defensive approach to opinion pieces.With Erdoğan’s triumph in the 10 August presidentialelection, the latter trend has continued. Zaman papersare now marked by a preponderance of reporting andcommentary on issues including irregularities in the ju-dicial process targeting would-be members of the “paral-lel state,” the AK-Party’s attempts to sweep the Decembercorruption investigations under the table, the govern-ment’s apparent efforts to destroy the movement-affili-ated Bank Asya, the difficulties ahead for an educationalsystem stripped of the dershanes, the discrimination facedby students, educators, and imams suspected of beingGülen sympathizers, and, of course, freedom of the press.

While all these causes are deeply important to theGülen Community, the latter represents perhaps thegreatest crisis. Both Erdoğan and his handpicked replace-ment for PM, former Minister of Foreign Affairs AhmetDavutoğlu, have affirmed that there will be no holdsbarred in the attempt to eliminate the “parallel state,” andthe press is clearly the most visible sign that the Gülen

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Community still has a presence in the country. With thisin mind, the urgency of some Zaman and TZ writers isunderstandable. Indeed, given the events of 2014, theabout-face of the Yilmaz columns with which this piecebegan is likely an existential concern.

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Renowned for its schools in over 120 countries, theFethullah Gülen movement has extended its broadspread of cultural propositions into other fields since theend of the ‘90s. In so doing, it has created a real alterna-tive submarket in publishing, telecommunications, andrecently in the field of entertainment. Other Islamicgroups in Turkey and beyond, both in the Middle Eastand Europe, have attempted to promote programmes inwhich preachers and Muslim intellectuals refer to spec-tators by drawing upon an explicitly religious discourse.However, in line with its pedagogical vocation and am-bition to speak to a larger public the Gülen movementhas distinguished itself for its productions in the field oftelevision fiction. Among these, the numerous televisionseries (a very popular genre in Turkey) broadcast by themovement’s platform Samanyolu TV occupy an impor-tant position. Indeed, several stand out: Beşinci Boyut(The Fifth Dimension), Ölümsüz Kahramanlar (Immor-tal Heroes), Tek Türkiye (One Turkey), and Şefkat Tepe(The Hill of Compassion).1

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Representing Islam: Cinematographic Productions

of the Gülen Movement

Fabio Vicini

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGmn4YoFX4khttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlIqE3oiYPghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ZKRI0gRJY

Instead, recent cinematic productions financed by themovement are much less numerous and less well-known.Here, Kelebek (Butterfly, 2009) and Selam (Peace, 2013)will be analysed. Not solely intended for a domestic pub-lic – through which they enjoyed a discreet though lim-ited success – but also for an international audience, bothfilms are quality productions backed by considerablebudgets. Despite being filmed by little-known Turkishdirectors, they are inspired by a ‘Hollywood’ narrativestyle, and apart from a few exceptions, primarily featureemerging actors. Generally, ‘Islamic’ cinematographic fic-tion focuses on stories of well-known individuals in Is-lamic history and tradition. This is the case of the recentseries Omar (2012), or of other films produced by themovement such as Hür Adam (The Free Man) – a biog-raphy of Said Nursi, the author of Risale-i Nur and in-spirator of the Nur communities as well as of the Gülen

movement. In contrast,both Kelebek and Selamseemingly tell the storiesof ordinary people. In re-ality, however, despite notbeing mentioned explic-itly, the main charactersin both films are teachersand activists of the move-ment – those who areknown as unnamed he-roes (isimsiz kahraman-ları) in the community.They are individuals whoare ready to sacrifice theirlives in the most remote

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and difficult places in order to build a better world. Forthis reason both films have high-value content, which fa-cilitates an analysis of the movement’s self-perception,and of the image of itself and Islam that it wants to con-vey to the world.

The Butterfly Effect

Kelebek (2009, director: Cihan Taşkın) is a specific ref-erence to the ‘butterfly effect’, a metaphor exemplifyingthe theory of chaos inspired by the science fiction narra-tive, and captured by a vast filmography. It hypothesisesthat the movement of air generated from the mere beat-ing of a butterfly’s wings could cause a hurricane on theother side of the world. Quoted by a persuasive GhassanMassoud in the guise of a mevlevi teacher to his small cir-cle of students, the metaphor lies at the centre of thefilm’s narrative plot. Here, Yusuf ’s choice of whether togo on mission with a group of friends (other volunteersof the movement), or not, reveals itself as instrumentalin avoiding the events of 11 September 2001. Yusuf is ayoung teacher who, after surviving a terrorist attack inTurkey, tries to return to the normality of his everydayroutine. However, due to his traumatic experience he haspartially lost his memory and is in a state of shock, thereal reason for which is only revealed at the end of thefilm. In the first half hour of the film, following the at-tack on the Twin Towers, Yusuf ’s sense of mental confu-sion and anxiety progressively increases. This feeling isfuelled by the mevlevi teacher who accuses Yusuf of beingresponsible for the terrorist attacks, until the protagonistregains his memory and decides to turn himself into the

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police. From here, an imaginary account of what wouldhave been if Yusuf had decided to travel to Afghanistanfive years earlier unravels. Indeed, Afghanistan is wherehis friends would have subsequently opened a Turkisheducational and first aid centre. There, Yusuf would havemet Ümit (Hope), a young man who dreamt of becom-ing a teacher. He would have helped him to pursue hisstudies in America with a group of fellow students. In-stead, Yusuf did not go to Afghanistan. Consequently,Ümit and his friends ended up being recruited into Tal-iban ranks and transformed into the hijackers responsiblefor the attack on the Twin Towers.

The film plays on this dual narrative plane betweenimagination and reality and is centered on the value ofresponsibility. As Yusuf says to an incredulous policecommissioner who tries to convince him that he is notto blame for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001:

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“man is not only responsible for things that he does butalso for what he doesn’t do”. The extreme sense of guiltthat torments Yusuf is a symptom of the sense of respon-sibility for all the evil and unhappiness in the world thatactivists of the Gülen community have to embody – atleast, ideally – as part of their way of ‘living’ a Muslimlife dedicated to the mission of serving the common good(hizmet).

Unnamed Heroes

Advertised on gigantic posters throughout Istanbul, Se-lam was released (director: Levent Demirkale) in 2013. Inthis case, the film’s identification with the movement isimmediately apparent not quite for its title or the veiledwoman on the poster, but for its subject matter. Selam nar-rates the story of three teachers who renounce their pro-fessional ambitions and affections for their desire to pro-mote a message of peace and hope (Selamet, hence thefilm’s title). They do this by going to work in three Turkishschools in three different countries: Bosnia Herzegovina,Senegal and Afghanistan. The effort, devotion and lovewith which these teachers devote themselves to their edu-cational mission is central to the film. The latter is in factdedicated to the memory of eleven isimsiz kahramanlarıwho lost their lives while volunteering for the communityabroad. Kimse Yok Mu?, a charitable organization linkedto the movement also makes an appearance in the film. Inaddition, one of the last settings featured in the film is theTurk Olympics (Türkçe Olimpiyatları), an annual singingevent organized by the movement, and in which studentsfrom its schools all around the world participate-

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The plot consistsof three parallel sto-ries. Each narrativeis centred on a dif-ferent negativeemotion experi-enced by three stu-dents – hatred(Senegal), revenge(Bosnia), suffering(Afghanistan) –which they are ableto overcome thanksto the fundamentallesson of life trans-mitted to them bytheir teachers. Akey value in the

film that is closely linked to that of responsibility,explored above, is ‘sacrifice’ (fedakarlık). In the film, thisis partially evoked through the Eid al-Adha festivitiesbut especially exemplified by the teachers, at times tothe point of immolation. Hence, Zehra, a young graduatewho renounces her love interest at home in order to takecare of children with motherly love and affection in aTurkish school in Afghanistan. Then, Harun, Zehra’slove, also willing to renounce his emotions to go andopen an educational centre in Senegal against his father’swill. Lastly, Adem, who leaves his pregnant wife toreturn to his students in Bosnia Herzegovina. Heeventually sacrifices his life for them – in a tragicconclusion – but not before giving them a last valuablelesson by stating, “In your lives, be a bridge (köprü) [be-

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tween people] not a river [dividing them]”.2 Thismetaphor is also frequently employed by the movement,particularly in relation to interreligious dialogue.

Love for humanity; the will to give oneself entirely forthe well-being of others; forever seeking God’s approval(Allah’ın Rızası için), without any expectations (beklenti-sizce), and with the sole intention of making other peoplehappy. These are some of the values that emerge from thestoryline. In their entirety, they compose a painting ofwhat an ideal world dominated by selamet would be like,and one that the movement strives to create through itsservice.3

Representing Islam in a Global Society

Kelebek and Selam are not merely two works strivingtowards self-contemplation. In fact, they are first andforemost a message to a Turkish, as well as global, audi-ence. For the former, these works attempt to illustratethe movement’s ideals and humanitarian efforts; actionsalso carried out in Turkey’s name and on its behalf. Giventhat nationalism is one of the movement’s main dimen-sions,4 the fact that all schools and centres represented inthe two films work under the Turkish flag is not surpris-

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2 From the website of the The Journalists and writers foundation:http://gyv.org.tr/Haberler/Detay/2738/Yunan%20akademisyen-

ler%20Hizmet%20%C3%B6rg%C3%BCt%20de%C4%9Fil%20bir%20hareket%20G%C3%BClen%20k%C3%B6pr%C3%BCler%20ku-ruyor

3 Vicini Fabio, “Pedagogies of Affection. The Role of Emulation inLearning Processes” in Anthropology of Education Quarterly, 44(4), 2013.

4 Balcı Bayram, Missionnaires de l ’Islam en Asie Centrale. Les EcolesTurques de Fethullah Gülen, Maisonneuve & Larose, Institut Françaisd’Etudes Anatoliennes, 2003.

ing. In this way, both films exemplify the fusion of Is-lamic ideals and state ideology that characterizes theGülen movement. Yet, in both films, the movement’sopenness to global dynamics is increasingly clear. This isaccompanied by the will to demonstrate the ‘real’ Islamto the world (in particular the Western one). This is notthe Islam of terrorists or the Taliban; rather, it is an Islamof responsibility, sacrifice and love for younger genera-tions promoted by the movement.5

Through their actions the teachers exemplify the ‘per-fect man’ (al-Insan al-Kamil) – a trope of Sufi literature– that acts as an example/illustration of the ideal Muslimman that the movement diffuses.6 This message respondsto a specific pedagogical model and civilizational princi-ple rooted in Islamic tradition. Indeed, it is also reinter-preted by Gülen through the new theme ofrepresentation (temsiliyet): representing Islam in everydayand individual concrete actions through activism and sac-rifice in order to create a new world, and a new human-ity.7

Finally, there appears to be an interesting evolutionfrom Kelebek to Selam, which extends beyond this com-mon ground. In the former, the choice of presenting ac-

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5 Agai Bekim, “The Gülen Movement’s Islamic Ethic of Education”in Turkish Islam and the Secular State. The Gülen Movement, ed. HakanM. Yavuz and J. L. Esposito, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse , 2003,pp.48–68; Agai, Bekim, “Islam and Education in Secular Turkey: StatePolicies and the Emergence of the Fethullah Gülen Group” in SchoolingIslam: the culture and politics of modern Muslim education, ed. Robert W.Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University Press,Princeton, 2007, pp.149–171; Vicini, 2014.

6 Yavuz, Hakan M., Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford Uni-versity Press, Oxford, 2003.

7 Gülen, Fethullah, İrşad Ekseni. İzmir Nil yayınları, 1998.

tivists as fellow pupils of a mevlevi community is defi-nitely the sign, together with other elements (America asa saving nation, veilless women), of a certain subservienceto certain Western concepts. This is due to the move-ment’s apparent desire to appease the West in order toconstruct itself as a global referent of a ‘moderate’ Islam.On the other hand, this choice corresponds to the paral-lel one set in motion by the leader of the Fethullah Gülencommunity. Indeed, the latter chooses to present himselfto the world as a learned Sufi, when in fact his personalhistory and intellectual genealogy contradict this self-rep-resentation.8 However, in Selam a greater display of self-confidence appears to take shape. Not only does one ofthe main characters (blue eyed and pretty faced) noncha-lantly wear a fashionable veil, but the juxtaposition be-tween an uninterested and selfish ‘white European’ witha generous, caring and altruistic ‘white Turk’ subtly un-derlies the whole film. This is likely a reflection of theauthor’s experience as well as of the movement in Africa.This implicit critique of Western civilisation appears tomark a rejection in the movement’s self-perception. Thus,moving from the expression of a moderate and ‘goodIslam’ with which the West can dialogue, to the ambitionof representing civilisation tout court.

Translation Mary Botigliero

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8 Vicini, 2013.

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The Journalists and Writers Foundation (Gazetecilerve Yazarlar Derneği) is an association linked to FetullahGülen, who acts as its honorary president. The associa-tion was founded in June 1994 by seventeen Turkishjournalists and writers, including Gülen himself. It wasfounded at a particularly tense ideological historical mo-ment – marked by a polarization of Turkish society –with the scope of “promoting the idea of coexistencethrough understanding among the masses”.1 Despitewhat its name implies, the Foundation is not a corporateassociation that aims to represent group interests. Ac-cording to the official JWF website, its mission is to “cre-ate opportunities to build a common living space basedon reconciliation and mutual respect.” To this end, theassociation organizes events that encourage people fromdifferent ideological backgrounds and religious orienta-tions to discuss themes such as democracy and religiousfreedom, political and cultural pluralism, and the func-tions of the modern nation-state.2

In articles and books on the Hizmet Movement, the

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e Journalists and Writers Foundation(GYV)

Maria Concetta Tedesco

1 http://gyv.org.tr/Hakkimizda/Detay/18/Our%20Mission2 http://gyv.org.tr/Hakkimizda/Detay/18/Our%20Mission

JWF is usually cited as an emblem of values of pluralismand acceptance of diversity – derived from the Gülenthinking – due to the specific attention it devotes to di-alogue and peace.3 It is also cited as an example of theMovement’s contribution to a tolerant and progressivecivil society.4 However, despite being mentioned in thesepublications, JWF is not the main focus of discussion.This article aims to present a more accurate descriptionof the Foundation, one emphasizing its social and mediastructure. On the one hand, the article underlines howJWF pushes for a redefinition of the social role of jour-nalists and writers in a direction that extends beyond theduty of informing readers, stretching into the spheres ofintercultural and inter-religious dialogue, and preventingsocial conflicts. On the other hand, it explores how JFWindirectly works as a spokesperson for the movement, re-leasing formal statements and transmitting messages di-

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3 See: Harrington James C., Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Free-dom and Democrcy in Turkey. The Political Trials and Times of FethullahGülen. Lanham, University Press of America, 2011, pp.14-15; EspositoJohn - İhsan Yılmaz, “Introduction: Islam and Peacebuilding: GülenMovement Initiatives” in Esposito, John and İhsan Yılmaz (ed), Islamand Peacebuilding: Gülen Movement Initiatives, Blue Dome Press, NewYork, 2011, p.11; Abu-Nimer Muhammad - İhsan Yılmaz, “Islamic Re-sources for Peacebuilding: Achievements and Challenges” in Esposito,John and İhsan Yılmaz (ed), Islam and Peacebuilding: Gülen MovementInitiatives”, Blue Dome Press, New York, p.50; Ebaugh Helen Rose,The Gülen Movement. A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rootedin Moderate Islam, Springer, London, 2010, p.89.

4 Yavuz M. Hakan, “The Gülen Movement. The Turkish Puritans”,in Turkish Islam and the Secular State. The Gülen Movement. SyracuseUniversity Press, Syracuse, 2003, pp. 41-42; Ugur Etga, “OrganizingCivil Society: The Abant Platform of the Gülen Movement” in GregBarton, İhsan Yılmaz and Paul Weller (ed), The Muslim World and Pol-itics in Transition: Creative Contribution of the Gülen (Hizmet) Move-ment, Continuum Press, London, 2013, pp. 52-52.

rected by Fetullah Gülen to his followers and wider pub-lic.

JWF is structured as an umbrella organization throughwhich five platforms and a research centre carry out theiractivities. The different platforms have distinct objectivesand fields of action, but they all follow the same modusoperandi: bringing people from different cultural, ethnic,religious, ideological and political backgrounds arounda discussion table. The aim is to find solutions to con-temporary social problems through debate. The Abantplatform (Abant Platformu) promotes yearly and quar-terly conferences in the U.S., Turkey and the MiddleEast. On these occasions, intellectuals, bureaucrats andpoliticians come together to discuss themes linked to re-ligion and politics. The Eurasia Dialogue Platform (Diya-log Avrasya Platformu) primarily aims to strengthencultural ties between Turkey, Azerbaijan and CentralAsian republics. This platform publishes ‘DA’ magazinein Turkish and Russian – with supplements in Kyrgyzand Kazakh – containing contributions by journalistsand intellectuals from Turkey and Central Asia. The Plat-form for Intercultural Dialogue (Kültürlerarası DiyalogPlatformu) organizes meetings and conferences focusingon inter-religious dialogue, with a particular focus onAbrahamic religions. The Medialog Platform (MedialogPlatformu) plans annual meetings on a national level forpeople working in the media sector. Its aim is to creatediscussions on issues within the sector, such as employ-ment problems, editorial independence and media ethics.The Platform also organizes conferences with foreignmedia and diplomatic representatives on Turkish territoryto promote more accurate knowledge of contemporary

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socio-political processes in Turkey. It also coordinates in-ternational forums in order to contribute to creating anongoing dialogue between media of different nations,placing specific attention to countries neighbouringTurkey. Lastly, the platform provides training seminarsto Turkish journalists and editors, and confers prizes topromote quality of information in order to establish amedia model that serves public interest. The Platform onWomen (Kadın Platformu) strives to create dialogue be-tween women from different backgrounds on the com-mon ground of “being first human than woman”.5 Itproposes solutions to problems, which are common todifferent women around the world. Furthermore, theJWF has established a Research Centre (AraştırmaMerkezi) to analyse themes dealt with by the Foundationand to promote further research on Gülen’s thought andthe Hizmet movement.

Although each different platform associated with theJWF boasts an independent board of trustees, they arelinked by a relationship of constant coordination andcomparison. All general secretaries of the various plat-forms belong to the board of trustees of the JWF. More-over, weekly meetings and collective activities meant toenhance cooperation between the platforms are organ-ized. This results in the promotion of initiatives, whichcan be common to each association, or to two or moreof them, depending on the theme. Lastly, it is importantto underline that all described institutions are technicallyseparate from magazines and TV channels linked to the

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5 http://www.kadip.org.tr/Hakkimizda/Detay/62/Misyonumuz%20&%2 0İlkelerimiz

Hizmet movement, such as Zaman and Samanyolu TV,and act independently of these. However, workers fromthese outlets participate in different platform activities asvolunteers, in particular in Medialog Platform and Eura-sia Dialogue Platform.

In light of the fact that many workers and journalistsin the television sector volunteer for JWF, attentionplaced on social media and the use of DA magazine – toincrease reciprocal knowledge and cultural ties betweenAzerbaijan, Turkey and Central Asia – all point to a cer-tain reality. Indeed, these factors indicate how the asso-ciation views the work of journalists, writers andtelevision operators as not being exclusively limited to ei-ther the field of information provision or public enter-tainment. According to Hüseyin Hurmalı, secretarygeneral of the Abant Platform, it is not a coincidence thatthe founders of the JWF are all writers and journalistsrather than bureaucrats or politicians. In fact, journalistsand writers represent the intellectual and liberal sphereof civil society, which is suited by its very nature to con-front itself with the ‘other’ both within the nation andabroad.6

With the Hizmet movement expanding well beyondTurkey’s borders, the JWF has gradually assumed an in-creasingly global character. In fact, during the first yearsof its existence, conferences and projects organized by theFoundation were almost exclusively devoted to resolvinginternal issues in Turkey. These included issues such asthe relationship between religion and secularism, or thecoexistence of ethnic and religious minorities within the

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6 Interview carried out by the author with Hüseyin Hurmalı on 16July 2014.

nation. Over the years, the Foundation began to focuson inter-religious dialogue and to finance developmentand sensitisation projects in various African and MiddleEastern countries. In July 2013, thanks to field experi-ence in preparing and managing international develop-ment projects and education on human rights, JWF wasable to attain a general consultative status withECOSOC, becoming the first and only Turkish NGOto obtain this accreditation. JWF’s affiliation withECOSOC has contributed to the globalising of its ob-jectives. Today, the foundation organizes internationalconferences around themes such as: women’s rights, sus-tainable development, philanthropy, respect for the sa-cred, and the role of civil society in peace-building.Moreover, it provides finances and grants annual prizesto NGOs that work in the field of armed conflict reso-lution and prevention. After obtaining a general affilia-tion with ECOSOC, JWF also opened new offices inregions where collaboration with the United Nations ismost intense: New York, Genoa, Vienna, and Nairobi. Itis also about to open offices in Addis Ababa and Brussels.Its partnership with ECOSOC is obviously an importantstep for JWF. Indeed, this allows the Foundation – and,as a consequence, the Hizmet Movement – to enjoygreater visibility and recognition on an internationallevel. Moreover, it ensures plenty of room for manoeuvrein spreading their ideas.

Lastly, it is interesting to note how JWF has a specialrelationship with Fetullah Gülen compared to other or-ganizations linked to the movement. Not only is heamong the Foundation’s promoters, Gülen also partici-pates directly in some of its activities. This does not occur

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in the case of other institutions inspired by his teachings.For example, within the framework of activities organ-ized by the Platform for Interreligious Dialogue, Gülenheld meetings with various religious leaders: Pope JohnPaul II (1998), the Greek Orthodox PatriarchBartholomew (1996), the Sephardic Rabbi Eliyahu BaskiDoron and various non-Muslim Turkish Leaders. 7 Oneof the reasons why Fetullah Gülen participates in JWFactivities is that these initiatives are suitable for a religiousleader. In fact, they do not require a specific professionalbackground or technical skills, such as teaching in aschool, writing for a newspaper or managing a televisionchannel. Rather, they require authority and charisma.Lastly, members of the board of trustees, and in particularMustafa Yeșil, secretary general of the Foundation, fre-quently hold consultation meetings with Gülen. Thiscontrasts with other associations linked to the movementwho work in a more independent fashion. During thesemeetings, both priorities and modes of actions are de-fined.

In fact, the intense relationship that the JWF has withGülen is such that it unofficially acts as the movement’sspokesperson. As argued by Etga Uğur,8 by not having aformal legal character but rather functioning as an en-semble of disconnected associations and institutions, oneof main problems of the Hizmet Movement is represen-tation. In other words, it is not easy to answer the ques-tion “who speaks on behalf of the movement?” Perhapsnewspapers and television channels linked to Gülen

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7 Gözaydın Iștar, “The Fethullah Gülen Movement and Politics inTurkey: A Chance for Democratization or a Trojan Horse?” In De-mocratization, Vol. 16/6, 2009, p.1224.

8 Uğur 2013, p.52.

spring to mind. However, if, on the one hand, the con-tent of news articles and television programmes repro-duce a vision of the world inspired by Gülen, they onlypartially convey the movement’s official positions. Onthe other hand, these newspapers and televisions insiston an auto-representation of non-biased means of infor-mation that convey their work in a technical and objec-tive way. Despite not claiming to represent theMovement, per se, the JWF releases official statementsafter careful consultations with Gülen. This is particu-larly the case during periods of acute political tension andsocial crisis. Moreover, according to Hüseyin Hurmalı,the Foundation “acts as Gülen’s tongue.”9 This expressionunderlines how Gülen frequently intervenes, sendingmessages to those present or to the general public duringconferences and dinners organized by JWF. He also em-ploys the JWF logo for its official correspondence withreligious or political authorities, both Turkish and inter-national. The strategy of transmitting public messagesand communications through JWF serves a dual pur-pose. On the one hand, it allows the movement to iden-tify in the Foundation a point of reference for its externalrelations. On the other, it enables news journals and tel-evision channels – such as Zaman and Samanyolu TV –to officially maintain a position of objectivity and neu-trality in carrying out their work. Moreover, it allowsthem to reinforce their image as independent institutionsinspired by, but not tightly bound to, a religious leader.

Translation Mary Bottigliero

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9 Interview carried by the author on the 16 July 2014.

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Authors

Rusen Çakır is journalist, writer and author of numerouspublications on political Islam in Turkey. He directed theprogram “Democracy, civil society and the Islamic world”of Tesev, the Turkish Foundation for Economic and SocialStudies. He has taught courses on “contemporary IslamicPolitical Thought and Turkey” at Marmara University (Is-tanbul) and on “Islam, Democracy and Civil Society” atthe University Suny Buffalo (New York). From October2014 he writes for the newspaper Haberturk. Recentlypublished: 100 x Soruda Erdoğan Gülen Savasi (“The WarErdoğan vs. Gülen in 100 questions”, with Semih Sakalli,ed. Metis, 2014. www.rusencakir.com

Joshua Carney is PhD student at the Department ofCommunication and Culture at Indiana University, helives in Istanbul. His research focuses on the combinationof reality and fiction in Turkish television series and theinfluence of Turkish politics, both foreign and not, in thenational and pan-Arab media. He collaborates with Resetand for Arab Media Report wrote “Reality (tv) in Wolve’sClothing? Valley of the Wolves” in the monograph “TheTurkish Touch. Neo-ottoman Hegemony and TurkishTelevision in the Middle East”, December 2013.

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Ragıp Duran is journalist and a correspondent for AFP,BBC (London), Hürriyet, Cumhuriyet, Özgür Gündem,Libération. For his journalistic work was honored with nu-merous awards. He has a blog (in Turkish language) wherein analyses and criticizes the media http://www.apoletlim-edya.blogspot.it/

Joshua Hendrick earned his PhD in sociology from theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz in 2009 and hisM.A. is socio-cultural anthropology from Northern Ari-zona University in 2001.  He received a B.A. in anthro-pology and a B.A. in religious studies from theUniversity of Georgia in 1999.Dr. Hendrick’s recent research focuses on Islamic polit-ical identity, elite-level social change, and processes ofdemocratization/global integration in Turkey.  His re-cently published book is titled, Gülen: The AmbiguousPolitics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World. NewYork. New York University Press, August, 2013.

Lea Nocera is Assistant Professor at the University ofNaples ‘L’Orientale’, where she teaches Turkish languageand literature. She focuses her research on the Turkishcontemporary history with a particular interest to the so-cial and cultural dynamics, and gender issues. Among herpublications: La Turchia contemporanea. Dalla repubblicakemalista al governo dell’Akp, Roma, Carocci, 2011 andCercasi mani piccole e abili. La migrazione turca in Ger-mania occidentale, Istanbul, Isis Press, 2012. For ArabMedia Report she has contributed to the monograph:“The Turkish Touch. Neo-ottoman Hegemony andTurkish Television in the Middle East”, p. 3-10, Rome:

Arab Media Report, 2013. She collaborates with Italianand foreigner radio, magazines and newspapers.

Semih Sakalli is journalist, and focuses on issues relatedto the Kurdish movement, the Islamic movements andlocal policies. Since 2012 he works as a documentaristfor the Turkish television channel Kanal D. With RusenÇakır wrote the book “100 x Soruda Erdoğan GülenSavasi” (“The War Erdoğan vs. Gülen in 100 questions”,with Semih Sakalli, ed. Metis, 2014.

Maria Concetta Tedesco graduated from the Faculty ofIslamic Studies, University of Naples “L’Orientale”, sheis a PhD scholar at the Department of Political and SocialSciences of the European University Institute (EUI) inFlorence. Her PhD thesis, entitled “Faith and Citizenshipin the Community Nur in Turkey: study on imaginationsocio-political Islamic” analyzes the socio-political imag-inary of the Nur movement in Turkey and its relationswith state institutions.

Fabio Vicini is Assistant Professor in Sociology and An-thropology at Istanbul 29 Mayıs University. Previouslyalso PhD fellow at Berlin Graduate School for MuslimCultures and Societies and Zentrum Moderner Orient,he has received his PhD in Anthropology and Historyfrom SUM - Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane at theUniversity of Siena, with a dissertation titled: Islamic Ed-ucation, Reasoning Practices and Civic Engagement. TheGülen and Suffa communities in Turkey. The dissertationhas won the Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA)2013 Malcolm H. Kerr Award in the Social Sciences.

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Alberto Pagano by Studio AlphaVia Casal del Marmo 520 – 00166 Rome

Tel. 06 3096956

Newspapers, magazines, TV channels, film productions: the Is-lamic Fethullah Gülen movement owns a media empire in Turkeyand in the world. Communication is a pillar of this movement,who promotes an idea of Islam behind the times, who, in the tra-dition, is able to match with technology, modernity, globalizationand to use it. Thanks of his media and an extensive internationalnetwork, composed of schools, cultural institutions, banks, finan-cial and commercial structures, support networks able to affect po-litical environments, since years Gülen movement is one of themost outstanding political player in Turkey, leaded by Akp party,of whom it was a strong ally, with whom now is on collision course.The monograph Gülen Media Empire, who contains Turkish, Ital-ian, US authors’ essays, intends to analyse Gülen movement andits relations with media (TV, print, movies). Through its mediaanalysis, these pages offer a look within the movement and its con-flict with Akp, more generally on Turkish media and politicalTurkish scenario latest developments.

Essays written by Ruşen Çakır, Joshua Carney, Ragıp Duran, LeaNocera, Semih Sakallı, Maria Concetta Tedesco, Fabio Vicini

€ 10,00 ISBN 9788898593125