May 7, 2019
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Fethullah Gulen: A Religious Activist or a Threat to the Turkish State?
Fethullah Gulen is a religious and political leader who was born and raised in the Turkish state. Gulen has been living in a self-imposed exile in the United State since 1999, stating that he traveled to the United States for medical treatment but has not left since. Followers of Gulen are known a Gulenists, with Gulenists subscribing to the Hizmet Movement. Hizmet stands for “the service” and is considered to be a global initiative that was inspired by the teachings of Gulen. The New York Times has described the group as “a moderate, pro-Western brand of Sunni Islam that appeals to many well-educated and professional Turks,”. The Gulen Movement has millions of followers within Turkey and spread across the rest of the world. The Turkish government defines the Gulen Movement and its followers as a terrorist entity, labeling the group as FETO, or the Fethullah Terrorist Organization.
The Gulen Movement advocates for secular democracy and have been found to have a more progressive take on social issues. For example, Gulenists educate both girls and boys on the same equal footing in Gulen schools. Gulenist schools put a strong emphasis on math and science and only teach religious courses depending on the school and the country the school is located within. Vox says this about Gulen: “He preaches an inclusive brand of Sunni Islam that emphasizes cooperation and tolerance, views modernity as broadly compatible with Islam, and, above all, stresses the importance of education outside of narrow religious schools.” The Gulen Movement has generated a global network of schools and universities over more than 100 countries; in the United States, this can be seen through the Harmony Public Schools, which is the largest charter school network in Texas.
It is important to note that neither Fethullah Gulen nor his movement have always been considered a terrorist group by the Turkish state. The Gulen movement has gone back and forth with its relationship towards the Turkish state. In the 1980s Gulen was accused by Turkish generals of plotting to overthrow the government in order to install an Islamic dictatorship. At this point, the Turkish military was still actively involved in keeping to the principles of Kemalism and maintaining a secular state. Following this, Gulen was on the run for six years before ultimately being arrested. He was later freed after receiving the support of former Prime Minister Turgat Ozal, who inevitably favored Gulen’s post-Cold War works to establish new schools in the Turkic republics, newly freed from the Soviet Union. In 2000, Gulen was accused of attempting to undermine the Turkish secular state.
Initially, Gulen and his Gulenists were considered to be an ally to Erdogan and the AKP. It has been reported that much of the Turkish National Police was controlled by the Gulenists; this benefitted Erdogan, as these Gulenists in the Turkish National Police headed two investigations made into allegations that individuals in the military and secular opposition were planning to overthrow Erdogan. This alliance obviously did not last forever, and upon Erdogan securing more power, the relationship began to wither. Sometime between 2010 and 2012 a power struggle emitted between the pro-Gulen police and the AK party; at this point in time the pro-Erdogan intelligence officials and the pro-Gulen police were thrown against each other. In December of 2013, a Gulenist exposed a corruption scandal within the Turkish government, alleging that the government illicitly traded gold with Iran in exchange for oil. On page 110 of Mudde and Kaltwasser’s Populism: A Very Short Introduction they state that corruption scandals are breeding grounds for populism; something the Gulenist who exposed the scandal was well aware of.
Most recently, in July of 2016, a portion of the Turkish military engaged in an attempted coup against the Turkish government. This coup quickly failed, however, it took no time at all for Erdogan and the AKP to direct the blame to Gulen and the FETO. As described in Us v. Them: the birth of populism, written by John B Judis, Erdogan can be considered a right-wing populist: an individual that pits the people against the elite who often favor a third party. This can be seen through his attempts to push the people against Gulen and his followers, many of whom who served in the Turkish Police Force. The Gulen community also saw great economic success through their use of the facilities of their market economy, pitching many Gulenists into elitism. Gulen rarely speaks to journalists, though he does speak out on occasion while also posting statements on his website. In an email interview with The Wall Street Journal, Gulen wrote: “We will never be a part of any plot against those who are governing our country.” Gulen has denied time and time again having any involvement with the attempted coup against Erdogan’s government, stating in an interview that he has been out of Turkey since 1999 and that he has no idea who is nor has he had contact with any members of the Turkish military. Gulen uses his media presence lightly, conducting few interviews and only speaking out at crucial points in time. In Populism and the Media by Lisa Manucci, she describes that defining the line between populist and non-populist actors comes down to who sends what type of populist messages, how often, through which channels, and under which circumstances (Mannuci, 468). Gulen uses his website and his works to present his ideologies to the public and his followers. Gulen is able to better orchestrate his public perception by speaking publicly less, and posting his own work more.
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Analysis of the July 2016 Attempt of Coup D’état in Turkey
Merriam-Webster defines coup’détat as a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics, typically the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group. On July 15th, 2016 the Republic of Turkey saw an attempted coup’détat by a section of the Turkish military. Had they been successful, this would have been the fourth coup’détat of the Turkish state since the inception of the nation. It has been alleged that had the attack been led by more senior ranking officials, as opposed to mid-level officials, the attack may have had a higher chance of success. This coordinated attack was launched in several of Turkey’s major cities in attempt to collapse the government and throw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan out of power. At the time of the attempted coup, President Erdogan was on vacation; the military used this to their advantage, taking control of many media outlets, the airport in Istanbul, as well as some strategic bridges. However, the military was unable to take control of all media outlets, allowing Erdogan to use social media as a means of sending a message to this supporters; Erdogan encouraged his supporters to take to the streets and fight back against these armed, fighting forces. As we saw in Donald Trump, American Populism and Affective Media, Erdogan was able to use affective media to rally his supporters to fight for the sake and well-being of the state; he was also able to use affective media after the fact as well as a means of showing the unity of the people through photographs captured throughout the course of the coup.
To put things into perspective, upon the foundation of the Republic of Turkey on October 29th, 1923, an Ottoman military leader by the name of Mustafa Kemal (later Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) was elected as the first president of the new nation. Ataturk was president for 15 years until his death in 1938, bringing with him a wide range of reforms in the political, social, legal, economic, and cultural spheres. Ataturk created a new political and legal system based on principles of parliamentary democracy, with one of his main stressor points being secularizing the nation. Under Ataturk’s leadership, religion and state affairs were separated, with a secular education system being established and both the Sultanate and Caliphate positions being abolished. A secularized state was very new to the Republic of Turkey, and those who held the Ottoman Empire near and dear to their hearts had a difficult time adapting. Rural areas were far less accepting of a secular state than those in urban areas.
The Turkish military was entrusted with upholding and protecting the principles of Kemalism, in large part the notion of the Turkish secular state, and was given the ability to intervene in the government if these principles became at risk. Since the rise of Islamist political parties in the Turkish state, beginning in the late 1960s through to the early 1970s, the military has had to do just that and step in several times. In 2008, the Turkish military went before the Constitutional Court stating that the AKP had an anti-secular agenda, and while funding was cut for the party, they were allowed to survive. Following this, Erdogan upped his game and made constitutional changes that reduced the country’s military influence.
The attempted coup’détat in the summer of 2016 was not the first the state saw of political unrest; in the summer of 2013 the government was faced with many protests by its citizens who felt frustrated with the AKP’s disregard for environmental issues, mistreatment of ethnic and sexual minorities, and the government’s continued moves towards authoritarian leadership. The government did not legitimize their concerns and used police brutality to fight back against the people. However, on the night of the coup’détat, many regular citizens took to the streets fighting side by side with loyalists soldiers and the police force, some of these citizens armed with no more than kitchen utensils, helping to defeat the attempted coup in a matter of hours (aljazeera). While victory was had by the Turkish government, many were injured and lives were lost, with 241 losing their lives and over 2,000 being injured.
In the years following the coup several theories of who’s to blame have floated around. Erdogan and his government place the blame on Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher and businessman. Gulen has lived in the United States, and still does, in exile, and though Erdogan has requested that Gulen be extradited, the United States has refused saying evidence against him is not sufficient. While Gulen had once been a close ally of Erdogan and the AKP party, the relationship dissolved following incidents in the late 2000s into the early 2010s, such as a corruption investigation that saw AKP businessmen arrested by Gulenist police officers; from this point forward the AKP worked to eradicate Gulen and his followers. The Turkish government stands by the claim that the coup was launched due to the Gulenists allegedly being concerned that a government investigation into their illegal actions would lead to their arrest, however, Gulen denies him and his followers had any part in the attempted coup. Gulen claims that Erdogan orchestrated the coup himself as a means of building up a dictatorship with himself as leader...claims he has continually denied. In the days following the coup, a national state of emergency was put into effect, carrying on throughout the remainder of the year. Al Jazeera news states “As of today, more than 100,000 people have been sacked or suspended and 50,000 arrested in an unprecedented crackdown. The government has deemed the crackdown necessary to ‘root out all coup supporters from the state apparatus,’”. Erdogan demonstrates how media can be an abrasive force that has the ability to threaten and alter the political sphere through the censorship that he enforces; Erdogan and the AKP give their opposition as well as topics they are not fond of very little air time, and those in opposition are frequently persecuted for their beliefs.
The attempted coup’détat by the military was a turning point for the Republic of Turkey, giving President Erdogan the justification he was looking for to further enhance his influence and power over the Turkish state. While Erdogan and the AKP party won their way into office democratically, as their years in power began to drag on, a shift towards authoritarianism began to become overwhelmingly apparent. Erdogan’s ability to rally the people using social media to come to the aid of the Turkish state perfectly exemplifies the populist grasp he and his party have on the nation; while support for Erdogan has begun to sway more severely in recent months, support for him and the AKP was all that was needed to bring the attempted coup crumbling to the ground. Erdogan used the coup and the support he received during it to push for a more authoritarian state; the backing he was able to gather through democratic elections and prior populist actions allowed him to have enough control and influence over the state allowed for this.
The Turkish Economy from the 1980s on
The Turkish economy has seen a whirlwind of highs and lows since the nation's inception in 1923. In this brief, I will mainly focus on the Turkish economy beginning with the 1980s and carrying through to the present year. Turkey is characterized as having a mainly free-market economy that is driven by both its industry and service sectors. Turkey’s traditional sector, the agricultural sector, still accounts for 25% of overall employment in the nation, though it has been surpassed by other industrial sectors. Other traditional Turkish employment and export sectors, the clothing and textile sectors of Turkey, have also been surpassed by industries such as the automotive, petrochemical, and electronic sectors. In recent years, the government has played a more active role in strategic sectors. In addition, the government has also used various economic institutions and regulators as a means of targeting the nation’s current president, Erdogan’s, political opponents. As a result, private sector confidence in the judicial system has dropped.
Turkey has seen several crises and blips in its economy in the last several decades, bouncing back and forth through the 1980s and 1990s, with a severe economic crisis occurring in 2001. The nation also saw economic instability in 2007-2008, 2013, and the years following, with the economy worsening as 2019 persists. The attempts to liberalize the Turkish financial systems to integrate with global financial markets began in 1980. Sakalloglu and Yeldan state that the financial systems in place prior to 1980 consisted of one full of attributes signaling financial oppression; this includes pressing issues such as negative real interest rates, heavy tax burden on financial earnings, high liquidity, and high reserve requirement rates. The financial liberalization reforms put into place was expected to result in an economic system that would be more capable and flexible for the nation, as well as a financial system that would be capable of converting national savings into productive investments at the lowest cost. The reform led to a strong emotional commitment and a stance of non-reversibility was taken on. Unfortunately, this liberalization reform did not procure it’s expected results, with no significant changes in the financial system occurring. While optimism in the economy was high throughout the 1980s, results were not seen and the optimism faded by the start of the 1990s. GDP continued to fluctuate, being poor between 1988 and 1989 before shooting up to 7.9% in 1990, and then falling back down to 1.1% in 1991.
As result of the financial liberalization reforms put into place, the real rate of interest rose to a new extreme, affecting domestic asset markets that were then impacted by the sudden changes seen in speculative foreign capital flows, in 1994 the financial system completely broke down, leading to a severe economic crisis. Public investments fell into a downward trend while private investment trends became increasingly unstable. Turkey’s banking and financial institutions began to dominate the capital in control of the nation’s overall economy. On page 487 of Politics, Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s, Yeldan and Sakalloglu, state “The crisis of 1994, in hindsight, showed the vulnerability of the Turkish economy to speculative gains of ‘hot money’ and ‘casino capitalism’ (Strange, 1986)”. Turkey chose to promote financial liberalization as the nation found itself following, as they believed, the logic of globalizing capitalism.
“Interaction between economics and politics depends not only on overall growth performance but also on who gains and who loses from growth, (487)”. This notion from Yeldman and Name continues to ring true into the 21st century, as can be seen through Erdogan’s populist leadership values. The financial crisis that plagued Turkey in 2001 is believed to have come from the prior structural weakness of the Turkish economy and the financial liberalization that began in the 1980s; Turkey’s introduction to globalization is described as premature and has led to serious economic and political problems.
During the financial crisis of 2001, Ankara adopted financial and fiscal reforms as part of an IMF program, in turn, strengthening Turkey’s economic fundamentals and allowing the nation to grow and flourish. State involvement was reduced due to the privatization of certain sectors and industries. When the AKP party and Erdogan won office in 2002 they continued on with the IMF ’s economic plan. While the nation was profiting, there were also downsides; chronic account deficits were produced due to Turkey’s severe foreign dependence on imports of capital and intermediate goods. This severe dependence left Turkey susceptible to external shocks, causing the nation’s economy to suffer once again in 2007 and 2008. In 2013 the devaluation of the Turkish currency, the Lira, began. The value of the Lira continues to plummet, with Erdogan and his populist party claiming this is due to an assault by foreign forces...a line that has begun to lose its power as the people have heard it too many times before. In July of 2018, Turkey’s treasury minister declared that the central bank would be more active than ever, though it was not until two months later that interest rates were actually raised; this being due to Erdogan’s opposition towards the matter. While these higher interest rates can temporarily help the economy, they will not bring long-term success. The AKP and Erdogan’s attitude raising interest rates, as well as to any interjection from the IMF, comes from their want for their own political survival and success, with their thoughts being that interjection would lead to a political disaster for the party and its leader. However, with the Turkish economy’s seemingly never-ending instability, can the nation withstand and survive Erdogan’s and the AKP’s leadership in their time of need? Only time will truly tell.
Media and Turkey
In 2017, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey number 155 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index...and in 12 short months Turkey was bumped down to 157 on the list; this put Turkey directly in between Rwanda at 156 and Kazakhstan at 158. To put this into perspective, this places Turkey only 3 spots away from Iraq, ranking in at 160. Prior to this, in 2010, Reporters Without Borders had placed Turkey on a list of “countries under surveillance” for the nation's lack of freedom towards the press. BBC states that television is the most influential news medium in Turkey, with press and broadcasting outlets both being operated by powerful businesses and affluent individuals. Many of these powerful businesses and affluent individuals in control of mainstream media are relatives or allies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These businesses typically only speak out against the Turkish government if their economic interests are in danger. For journalists, reporting on matters such as the Turkish military, the Kurds, or political Islam can lead to arrest or persecution. The same goes for insulting the Turkish nation or the Turkish president.
“Turkey’s failed coup in 2016 had a profound impact on the media. A government clampdown on the plotters and their alleged supporters has extended to media outlets and journalists,” (BBC). This failed coup put many behind bars, with the state of emergency that was imposed dozens of journalists being imprisoned without trial. At this point in time the government also closed down dozens upon dozens of media outlets and media pluralism was reduced to a handful of low-circulation newspapers. The Turkish Radio and Television, the TRT, is the state broadcaster and operates four national networks. Other television networks include Star TV, a private station being the first to break the state TV’s reign, as well as Show TV and Kanal D, both private and widely-watched networks. The TRT is also the state radio broadcast, offering several services: cultural/educational network TRT 1, popular music network TRT 3, and the Turkish folk/classical music station TRT 4. Other popular radio networks include Kral FM and Super FM, both privately owned networks. Popular newspapers include the Hurriyet and Milliyet, both circulated to the masses daily. The Hurriyet also has the Hurriyet Daily News, which is the English language version of the newspaper.
Istanbul is the media capital of Turkey and hosts the dominating press outlets. By late 2015 there were nearly 46 million Turks online, with the level of internet penetration coming in at around 69.9%. Translate Media stated that this percentage causes Turkey to be placed on the outskirts of the world’s 50 most connected nations. The Kurdish population fares worse, with the lowest internet access percentage, ringing in at 58.2%. While the Kurd’s have typically suffered at the hands of the Turkish government, in recent years the TRT has begun to introduce broadcasts in Kurdish under the reforms put in place by the government in an attempt to meet the European Union’s criteria on minorities. Prior to this, Kurdish broadcasts in Turkey were banned.
Translate Media states that Turkey has the fifth largest base of internet users in Europe, though strict internet laws cause websites to be blocked frequently. In recent years YouTube was blocked/banned due to videos posted that were deemed to be insulting towards the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. In 2011 the World Press Freedom Index made the report that Turkey’s internet regulator banned 138 words, including the word “free”, with this ban carrying on through 2017. Translate Media also reports that the fourth most popular website is Facebook, bragging over 69.9% of the population using the network. Twitter is also popular in Turkey, with about 9.6 million users. President Erdogan has 13.5 million followers on Twitter and uses the platform to enforce the views of the AKP party and shine a light on his leadership.