I am responding to Soner Capagtay's article that appeared on February 25.
I am distressed--perhaps outraged would be a better word--on two accounts. First, that Mr Capagtay makes a series of serious accusations without offering a stitch of evidence. His thesis that "the balance of power in Turkey has shifted.." and that "the force behind this dramatic change is the Fethullah Gulen Movement" is presented as a fact but without justifiying the claim. So, too, his assertion that "the Gulen movement...controls the national police and its powerful intelligence branch": where is his evidence--a single scintilla of evidence--to support this assertion? Later, he refers to Zekeriya Oz and Ramazan Akyurek "as well as other powerful people in the police" as among those "thought by some to be Gulen sympathizers." Thought by whom? Who is "some"? And by the way, the notion of "Gulen sympathizers" within a group is a far cry from that group having become an arm of the Gulen Movement. Innuendo has long been a political weapon--it is the very weapon Mr Capagtay accuses the Gulen Movement of wielding. But he seems more than adept himself at levelling it at the Movement that he clearly dislikes and wishes to discredit.
Second, that my own experience of the Gulen Movement is very different. I have read Gulen's work extensively and find his thought Islamist and universalist--not jihadist or even simply Islamist. His vision of Turkey is that it reconnect to its Islamic roots as those roots were understood in the late Ottoman period, when absolute freedom of religion was guaranteed by the state to those of all faiths. I have spent time in the schools affiliated with the Gulen Movement, in the offices of their media outlets and in homes of the Movement's members and supporters and have seen nothing--nothing--to suggest the sort of vision articulated by Mr Capagtay.
I have to wonder: is he seeing what his own hostility makes him see, or is he trying to stir up an anxious issue in the hope of generating more readers?
Sincerely,
Ori Z Soltes
Georgetown University
