TURKPULSE No:46..........AUGUST 16th, 2001
The most significant sign to show the characteristic and future performance of the new party led by Tayyip Erdogan is its party logo, the light bulb. With this logo the new party, knowingly or unknowingly, threw in its lot with the Saidi Nursi sect and its present day representative Fethullah Gulen. This fact, for its part, clearly indicated that it will not only be a party of political Islam but also a secessionist one that associates itself with the Fethullah group, which is currently being tried by the State Security Court (SSC) with heavy prison sentences in store. Tayyip’s party being only a few days old, the article below focuses attention on the Fethullah Gulen affair with all its past performance and external implications.
On Tuesday, August 14th, the new religious party, the Justice and Development Party briefly called AK Party, came to life with its controversial leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former Mayor of Istanbul, in command. The labour was long and painful and the new baby was inflicted with a number of serious illnesses from the outset, as well as a precarious future for the reasons explained below.
The disadvantages of the new party and its leader Tayyip Erdogan
Above all, it is a splintering group from the main body of Necmettin Erbakan’s five successive religious parties. Experience shows that such political parties founded by splintering groups do not have a bright future in Turkish political life, as the main body retains its supporters of several factions of the population. The strife between Erbakan’s followers and Tayyip’s group, even before the foundation of these two new religious parties, the Saadet Party and the AK Party, shows that the former has the backing of these traditional supporters of political Islam in Turkey and among the Turks in Europe. The only exception to this fact may be the Fethullah Gulen group that deserves the focus of attention of this article.
Firstly, the leader of the new party, Tayyip Erdogan, is facing some very grave charges about $1 billion secret funds allegedly pocketed by the companies in league with Tayyip, namely Albayrak Holding, when he was the mayor of Istanbul.
Secondly, even his existence in active politics is questionable according to several law experts, as like Necmettin Erbakan, Tayyip Erdogan has also been sentenced under Article 312 of the Penal Code banning activities against the State. That is why the eyes of the security forces and the Judiciary are now focused on Tayyip even before the foundation of the party for the reasons to be explained below.
Last but not least, Tayyip’s biggest source of strength, the all-out media support, is paradoxically his biggest weakness, because it is known that this is done by the Disinformation Mechanism that has a pitch black record in Turkey. Tayyip has been labelled an American stooge from the beginning because the Disinformation Mechanism inadvertently gave him away with its propaganda publications such as kissing his father’s feet etc and other activities about political Islam in Turkey such as the Merve Kavakci and Fethullah Gulen affairs.
Leaving aside the grave corruption charges to the tune of $1 billion about Tayyip Erdogan, because the judicial process is currently in progress about this, it is noteworthy to analyse, now that they have founded their party, what popular support the new party will receive and how effective it will be. It is a fact that Erbakan has managed to retain the main forces of the political Islam in Turkey with the supporter factions of his “Milli Gorus” (National Outlook) in Turkey and Europe.
Fethullah, with his pro-American inclinations, has never been one of these religious groups that supported Erbakan’s five political parties. Now Tayyip’s new party is clearly betting for the popular support of this influential faction and it constitutes much bigger risks for Turkey’s national security than Erbakan’s five parties have ever done. In addition to the dangers from religious implications in politics, the new party is also risking to be a secessionist party with its inevitable and voluntary involvement with Fethullah Gulen.
Brief background to Fethullah’s present situation
Fethullah Gulen has several publications and TV recordings advising his supporters to infiltrate into the Armed Forces, the Police, the Judiciary, Mulkiye (the Political Science Faculty that trains Turkey’s top bureaucrats) and other key positions of the State such as educational institutions. He strongly demands his followers to refrain from a showdown with the State until they are strong enough to win it. “Don’t resort to force if there is no balance between your power and theirs,” he stresses. “Until you attain the level of strength that you can carry Turkey on your shoulders, until you attain the strength capable of attracting to your front the constitutional institutions of Turkey any step you will take for a showdown is inappropriate and inopportune. Article 24 (of the Constitution concerning the freedom of religion and conscience) is tantamount to resigning to be beheaded by these men,” he warns.
Fethullah’s clandestine tactics, activities and organization
Fethullah’s final aim being to set up a theocratic State in Turkey, as several documents prove, he runs part of his activities in the open as legal companies, institutions and foundations and others clandestinely under cover.
On November 30th, 1925 Ataturk closed down with a law all individual religious institutions and schools (called in Islam medrese, tekke, zaviye) and replaced them with western schools and institutions. To dodge this ban, Fethullah set up hundreds of schools, dormitories, hostels and independent classrooms to prepare students for entrance examinations of universities and planted in them the medrese (religious school) teaching while ostensibly observing modern teaching methods.
Fethullah Gulen belongs to the Nurcu sect of Saidi Nursi, “Nur” meaning “light”, “religious light” or “enlightenment” in Arabic. Consequently, the clandestine part of Fethullah’s activities concerned the foundation of “isik evleri” (“houses of light” as “light houses” mean something else concerned with navigation in English) and training bright students as hidden Nurcus under the supervision of imams.
To this end, the Fethullah faction set up an organization composed of a consultative committee, regional imams, city imams, district imams and house imams. Attached to this illegal set-up covering the entire country like a web there exists legal companies, schools and foundations at home and abroad. The organization has as rigid a hierarchy as the armed forces, according to the security forces’ documents.
The Fethullah group picks bright students from poor families, takes them into its houses of light with 5-6 inmates and educates them as well as training them as nurcu militants. Each house and classroom comes under the regional imam and he supervises the work of the house imam who is usually the oldest and most senior inmate. As from 1990 the local artisans and craftsmen were recruited into this organization and they provided important funds to these activities. In 1996 ISHAD (Businessmen’s Solidarity Association) was established and they were the first to move into the newly independent Turkic republics as Turkish capital. Businessmen in Anatolia who are called the Anatolian tigers are partially Fethullah supporters. They are also very active and successful in exports because the “pivot” for it is the support of the United States, as the documents of the indictment put it. They attempted to infiltrate into State intelligence and the military but especially after the February 28th, 1997 operation in the National Security Organization they received deadly blows through purges from the military and civilian government agencies.
The Fethullah group does not openly support a political party, but with the foundation of the new party this may now change eventually, if not at the beginning, as they know that an open association with Saidi Nursi would be the end of the party. This group sees the military in Turkey as the sole barrier in their way to ruling power and that is partially what rests in Mesut Yilmaz’s recent dispute with the TGS. Two grandchildren of Saidi Nursi, the prophet of this sect, are prominent members of ANAP. Kamran Inan (ANAP, Van) is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Edip Safder Gaydali (ANAP, Bitlis) is a Minister of State. They are both loyal citizens of the Turkish Republic and are useful in curbing the Fethullah group’s influence and political strength among the Nurcus. Now that there is an underhanded reconciliation effort between Washington and ANAP, however, it is suspected that the USA and the EU are trying to use Mesut Yilmaz as a tool to facilitate Fethullah’s and other subversive activists’ tasks with too liberal new legislations in Turkey.
Financial resources are top secret, but their outcome is partially evident
“To be able to run its intensive and comprehensive activities Fethullah Gulen has vast financial resources. Even though some of these financial resources are common knowledge, the other reactionary resources and the external resources are unknown. Relations about these financial resources are run in top secret,” according to the indictment.
The Fethullah group has vast real estate property assets from which it secures a large rent income. The Akyazili Foundation of the Fethullah group, for instance, has innumerable dwellings, shops, offices, schools, malls, classrooms, and hostels in 23 provinces and they bring considerable income. The Asya Finans Kurumu of this group received TL553 billion business incentives from the State in September 1997, according to the security reports, and they believe that PM Ecevit accorded it in exchange for Fethullah’s support at the elections. In fact, Ecevit believes that Fethullah’s schools at home and abroad are not harmful, even though their aim may be different, but security forces regard these activities as the biggest danger to Turkey’s constitutional secular system in the long run, because there is a superpower behind these activities and they have already covered a long distance in their ambitions.
Fethullah receives monthly and yearly donations, which he terms “taxes”, from his supporters. For the schools in Kazakhstan he collected $1 million from his supporters in Denizli and he ran similar activities in Afyon, Malatya, Kayseri and Izmit. Big business ventures such as Isik Sigorta (insurance company), Asya Finans (non-interest finance corporation), ISHAD (Business Life Solidarity Association) and GIAD (The Young Businessmen’s Association) are all big donators to Fethullah. It also has tremendous incomes from its newpapers, magazines, radio and TV stations. It supports the presidential system for a soft landing to ruling power in Turkey, according to security reports. Tayyip’s new party is probably a major breakthrough in this superpower’s ambition of Turkey.
Throughout Turkey the Fethullah group has 88 foundations, 20 associations, 128 private schools, 218 companies, 129 classrooms and about 500 student hostels. In addition, they have 17 media organs, one being in English, newspapers with an average circulation of 250,000, TV stations, two nationwide radio stations, a non-interest finance corporation, and an insurance company. Its educational institutions surpass the government’s educational institutions in certain places. The only barrier in the way of this highly organized, superpower supported and very effective subversive activity is the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF). There have been attempts to infiltrate the TAF by marrying highly educated girls without headscarves with the Armed Forces’ personnel, but just as Pres. Demirel promptly described Merve Kavakci as an “agent provocateur” so the security forces learnt of these infiltration efforts and undid them.
Here is the list of the Fethullah group’s big business ventures. They are all located in Istanbul unless otherwise specified:
(a) Zaman daily newpaper, (b) Samanyolu TV, (c) CHA (Cihan Haber Ajansi) daily news agency, (d) Sizinti magazine in Izmir, (e) Weekly Aksiyon magazine, (f) ISHAD, (g) Asya Finans, (h) Isik Sigorta, (i) Cag Ogretim Isletmeleri (Contemporary Educational Ventures), (j) The Fatih Egitim ve Ogretim Associations A.S. (The Fatih Educational Associations Corporation), (k) Samanyolu Basin Yayin Sanayi AS (The Samanyolu Press and Broadcasting Corporation), (l) Feza Gazetecilik AS (The Feza Newspaper Corp.), (m) Ufuk Egitim Isletmeleri AS (The Horizon Educational Enterprises Corp.), (n) Firat Egitim Merkezi (The Firat Educational Centre), (o) Istanbul FEM Dersaneleri (classrooms), (p) Akyazili Orta ve Yuksek Egitim Vakfi in Izmir (The Akyazili Foundation for Secondary and Higher Education), (r) TOV - Turkiye Ogretmenler Vakfi in Ankara (The Turkish Teachers’ Foundation), (s) Turkiye Gazeteciler ve Yazarlar Vakfi in Ankara (The Turkish Journalists’ and Writers’ Foundation), (t) Ozel Maltepe Dershaneleri in Ankara (The Private Maltepe Classrooms), (u) Fatih Universitesi in Istanbul and Ankara (Fatih University) and Cankaya Tib Merkezi (Cankaya Medical Centre) attached to the University.
Educational activities abroad
Shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union as from 1989 the Fethullah group moved into the newly independent Central Asian Turkic states with small- and medium-size business and educational institutions. According to security forces assessments, these activities supported and financed by Washington had the following aims:
Following the activities started intensively as from 1992, the Fethullah group founded six universities and higher educational institutions, 236 high schools, two primary schools, eight language and computer centres, six university preparatory courses, 21 student hostels - a total of 279 educational institutions in 35 countries.
Also, the Fethullah group with the United States behind it, took adventage of Turkey’s higher educational program started 6-7 years ago. As YOK (The Higher Educational Agency) and the Ministry of Education planned to send thousands of Turkish students abroad, mostly to the United States, the UK and France for post-graduate studies with the end in view of training teachers for the new universities, Fethullah infiltrated into them and won most of them over. The Turkish State spent $40 thousand a year for each of these post-graduate students educated abroad and Fethullah attempted to make them Nurcu militants. They return to Turkey as teaching staff in universities, starting as assistants, but working their way up in time. Security forces try to undo this subversion by keeping a close watch on these developments, but Fatih University has already been lost to the Fethullah group and may be closed down by YOK.
In short, the Fethullah group is a long-term American plan going on for decades to spread the Nurcu sect in the Islamic world, primarily in Turkey.
They have now taken a new step in these activities by setting up their own political party under Tayyip Erdogan.
Such disgusting subversion is bound to be fouled by the Turkish security forces, Judiciary and Ataturkist forces, given the fact that Saidi Nursi had rebelled against Ankara in Eastern Anatolia in the second half of the 1920s when the British Empire wanted to annex Mosul which had been left unsettled at the Treaty of Laussanne.
Tayyip Erdogan has launched his new party under these conditions. What future he has in politics remains to be seen. One thing is certain: dangling the EU membership before Turkey’s eyes as a bait in order to facilitate these subversive activities will not work no matter what Mesut Yilmaz says. Turkey’s national security cannot be sacrifized because some well intentioned politicians are too naive and inexperienced. This is maticuliously planned, highly financed, long-term superpower infiltration and subversion, not a child’s game that should be brushed aside with a commonplace remark “conspiracy theory”. uras@ada.net.tr, August 16th, 2001