A round up on the canning of Istanbul’s top police official
Posted by Sappho on December 20th, 2013 filed in Blogwatch
A long simmering conflict between Turkey’s ruling AKP and its former allies in the Gülen movement has come to a head within the past few days, with a corruption investigation that targeted many officials close to the Prime Minister and the firing of Istanbul’s top police official. Here’s a round up of what some bloggers and newspapers are saying.
From Josh Marshall:
There’s a massively important story unfolding right now in Turkey. Here’s the latest development and some background on it – the canning of Istanbul’s top police official. But that’s only one small part of a very large and quite opaque picture. There’s a massive and far-flung corruption investigation that has already targeted numerous officials either in or close to Prime Minister Erdogan’s government.
Erdogan says this is all a conspiracy against his government. And many do believe that the probe was instigated by members of the so-called ‘Gullen Movement‘ a very, very influential moderate Islamist movement headed up by Fethullah Gulen, who of all things lives in voluntary exile in Pennsylvania….
From Michael Koplow at the Ottomans and Zionists blog:
For months now there has been open war between the AKP and its erstwhile allies in the Gülen movement. The feuding can be traced back to an overzealous Gülenist prosecutor’s attempt to interrogate Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, and things have spiraled downward from there, with Gülenist media outlets such as Zaman now routinely slamming the prime minister and government officials making shadowy threats about the Gülen movement having to be put down….
That brings us to today, when Turkish police arrested nearly 50 people at Halkbank, including the sons of two cabinet ministers, over corruption allegations in the government tender process. Halkbank has long been reputed to be actively involved in evading U.S. sanction on Iran, and indeed is the bank that processes Turkish payments for Iranian oil and gas, so it is highly likely that this probe is not based on fictitious charges. Nevertheless, it does not escape notice that the Turkish police and judiciary are dominated by Gülenists, and that the Istanbul prosecutor’s office has now arrested a number of people who are prominently connected to the government….
The dismissal of the police chiefs involved in the ongoing bribery probe represents a political intervention into the prosecutions, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Ertu?rul Günay has said, also adding that the three ministers whose sons have been detained should resign.
“When a person, who is under investigation, is making shifts in the police department when the operation is ongoing, it is an intervention into the prosecution, an unforgettable violation of law and crime,” Günay wrote via his Twitter account on Dec. 20….
… Since its founding, the Gulen movement has implemented two strategies. On the one hand, while forming an effective religion-based civil organization focused on providing services, becoming a successful example of an aid movement. On the other hand, like many movements formed at the time, it placed importance to infiltrating into vital state institutions.
The opening of the channels between the society, politics, and the state caused radical changes firstly in political activities and mediums through which service was provided to the people. At a time when democracy is valid, and the barriers between the public and the state are lifted, the legitimacy of social movements is limited to their public effectiveness and influence. The sole way to make the state to truly belong to the people is to join politics through social channels with the use of democratic mechanisms, while being vary of bureaucratic obstacles. In this context, the state-focused strategy of the Gulen movement that was formulated nearly half a century ago, has lost its foundation. The only way for the Gulen movement to serve the public is to focus on civil activities and to abandon using their bureaucratic gains to influence politics….
Fourteen more senior police commissioners have been removed from their positions in the Turkish National Police headquarters as part of the developments that followed a high-level corruption crackdown that includes the sons of three cabinet ministers and renowned businessmen.
The government started comprehensive revisions in the Turkish police force on Wednesday, a day after the corruption raids, in a move widely perceived as Ankara’s response to the corruption investigation, which Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls a “dirty operation” to smear his administration and undermine the country’s progress.