Gulen: The AKP’s leaders now depict every democratic criticism of them as an attack on the state.
Reuters/AFP/Ankara
The Turkish government has cancelled the passport of ally-turned-foe Fethullah Gulen, local media reported yesterday, the latest salvo in a bitter feud between the US-based Muslim cleric and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan and his ruling AK Party (AKP) accuse Gulen and his supporters of seeking to establish a “parallel state” in Turkey and of orchestrating a corruption investigation in 2013 which briefly threatened to engulf the government.
Gulen, who denies the accusations, stepped up his own criticism of Erdogan, saying that he was leading Turkey “toward totalitarianism”.
CNN Turk said on its website that Turkey had informed US officials on January 28 that it was revoking Gulen’s passport because it was issued based on a “false statement”.
Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.
A Turkish foreign ministry official said he could not confirm the media reports.
The move could bring Ankara a step closer to issuing a formal extradition request for Gulen.
Washington is expected to reject such a demand, further fraying bilateral ties already strained over regional policy and US concerns over what some see as Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism.
Erdogan has already called for Gulen to be deported.
In December a court issued an arrest warrant for the cleric, who had been a close ally of Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted party for many years after it came to power in 2002.
After the graft allegations emerged in 2013, however, Erdogan, then prime minister, purged Turkey’s state apparatus, reassigning thousands of police and hundreds of judges and prosecutors deemed loyal to Gulen.
Turkish authorities have also conducted raids against media organisations seen as close to Gulen, triggering criticism from rights groups and the European Union, which Turkey still aspires to join.
Hidayet Karaca, head of the Samanyolu broadcaster who has been jailed since December, said yesterday that the case against Gulen and senior media executives was politically motivated.
“The police raids and arrests have become part of a strategy by the AKP government to silence the free press. It’s no longer possible to discuss judicial independence in Turkey,” Karaca said in a written response to questions from Reuters submitted through his lawyers.
In an op-ed published yesterday in the New York Times entitled Turkey’s Eroding Democracy, Gulen accused Erdogan – who remains popular in Turkey – of using his electoral successes to ignore the constitution and suppress dissent.
“By viewing every critical voice as an enemy – or worse, a traitor – they are leading the country toward totalitarianism,” he wrote.
“The AKP’s leaders now depict every democratic criticism of them as an attack on the state,” Gulen wrote.
He said that a “historic opportunity” for Turkey to become a progressive state with a real chance of EU membership had been “squandered” in the AKP’s crackdown on civil society and the media.
The opinion piece identified Gulen, 73, who rarely emerges from his well-guarded compound, as an “Islamic scholar, preacher and social advocate”.
He did not identify Erdogan by name in the article.
