Erdogan sides with Generals, may signal split with Gulen



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-27/erdogan-siding-with-generals-may-signal-islamist-split.html#disqus_thread

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rare expression of sympathy for Turkish generals this month may signal a split with Turkey’s most powerful religious movement, undermining the unity of his government.

Erdogan, who has backed a series of inquiries into alleged coup plots that have left hundreds of army officers in prison, was critical of the latest probe, saying it was “unsettling” the country. Previously, he blocked an attempt by one of the investigations to interrogate Turkey’s intelligence chiefTurkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Many Turkish analysts saw those actions as a warning directed at Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish imam based in the U.S. and leader of a movement widely seen here as a driving force behind the prosecutions. Curbing the army’s power has been a key policy for Erdogan, who has presided over record growth after ending an era of fragile coalition governments. Now, the premier and Gulen may no longer share the same goals, threatening the stability that underlay Erdogan’s economic success.

“All movements start to crack once they’ve reached a certain point,” said Atila Yesilada, an Istanbul-based analyst at Global Source Partners, a political and economic research firm. “If Gulen believes that Erdogan will never share political power with him, he will organize within alternative institutions to rival him.”

Conquer From Within

Gulen has been based in Pennsylvania since he left Turkey in March 1999 to undergo a health check-up in the U.S., according to Ahmet Sik’s book “The Imam’s Army.” In June that year, Turkish television broadcast footage of the imam telling followers to spread his ideas and conquer the state from within in the name of Islam, the book says. Gulen was prosecuted in absentia for seeking to overthrow the constitution, a charge that was dismissed by judges in 2008.

His followers are known as the Cemaat, or Congregation, in Turkey. The organization runs more than 1,000 schools in 140 countries, Mustafa Yesil, one of its leading figures and chairman of the Journalists and Writers Foundation in Istanbul, told Taraf newspaper this month. He described the movement as “faith-based, pacifist, pluralist, colorful and pro- democratic.”

Detractors say it has cells within key areas of the Turkish state. Sik’s study chronicles the group’s efforts to organize inside the police force. Prosecutors banned the book and Sik was arrested and charged with involvement in a coup plot. He was released pending trial in March after 13 months in jail.

Yesil told Taraf that there are Gulen followers in the police and judiciary, though their loyalty to the group wouldn’t interfere with their responsibility to enforce the law. He declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg. Gulen’s website didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Ekrem Dumanli, editor-in-chief of Gulen-backed Zaman newspaper, the country’s best-selling daily, didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

‘End This Injustice’

Hundreds of serving and retired military officers, including former Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug, have been jailed during the probes, as well as academics including Baskent University Rector Mehmet Haberal, and journalists including Sik and Nedim Sener who wrote about the Gulen movement.

“What’s scary is that the Gulen followers in the prosecution are trying to do away with respectable public personalities in order to recreate Turkey in their vision,” Sener, who was released together with Sik, said in a phone interview. “The government can’t control this and is uncomfortable. Still, the government isn’t taking any action, it’s only voicing disturbance. Its duty is to do something to end this injustice.”

Disturbed by Raids

On May 8, Erdogan said he is “disturbed” by the unending raids against current and former military officers, after the arrest of army personnel for allegedly plotting to remove the government in 1997. He urged the prosecution to get their investigation “over and done with” -- backtracking from earlier expressions of support when he said the case should be pursued “as far as it needs to.”

Prosecutors detained four retired generals today in connection with their investigation of the so-called postmodern coup 15 years ago, sending them to Ankara for depositions. All were members of the National Security Council that prosecutors say ousted the government, NTV news channel reported.

Fadi Hakura, an analyst at Chatham House research institute in London, said he’s skeptical whether Erdogan’s comments mark a change of course, saying he may be seeking to assuage domestic and external critics of the investigations, which have been slammed by the European Union and rights groups. The government has shown in the past that it can remove prosecutors from cases when it isn’t happy with their direction, and that hasn’t happened with the 1997 coup probe, he said in a phone interview.

Still, the comments earned Erdogan a rebuke from Gulen’s media outlets. They will be “etched into history as not befitting a prime minister,” wrote Bulent Kenes in the Gulen- backed newspaper Today’s Zaman. “The masses, who are the main makers of history and the main power driving the ruling AKP, do not agree with the prime minister in this respect.”

Army Powers

Erdogan’s own background is Islamist: he was a leading member of two parties banned on the grounds they threatened Turkey’s secular system, and served a jail sentence in the 1990s for reading a religious poem at a political rally.

Since his Justice and Development Party or AKP came to power, Erdogan has reduced the powers of the military, which has seen itself as the guardian of secularism in Turkey and ousted an Islamist-led coalition in 1997. He ended army control over the National Security Council and ignored military objections to a United Nations plan to unify Cyprus.

When the generals objected to his choice of Abdullah Gul as president in 2007, Erdogan called a snap election, won with an increased majority, then installed Gul as head of state. Erdogan is favored to succeed to the presidency, an above-party job, when Gul’s term ends in 2014.

Under Erdogan the economy has grown at an annual average of about 5.5 percent. His government slashed budget deficits, helping reduce borrowing costs to record lows and the national debt to less than 40 percent of economic output.

Erdogan ‘So Dominant’

For now, “Erdogan is so dominant, I’m not sure Gulen would want to take him on,” said Tim Ash, head of emerging markets research at Royal Bank of Scotland Plc in London.

Still, when the premier was off work sick last year, “we saw guys around him battling Gulen’s people,” Ash said, referring to a row over legislation on soccer match-fixing late last year. Factional disputes could intensify and become “a big issue for Turkey” if the presidency takes Erdogan away from day-to-day politics, he said.

Erdogan’s support for the coup probes that began rounding up army officers in 2007 pushed the four top military commanders to quit in July last year.

“Erdogan is quite happy with the current leadership of the Turkish military because they were effectively chosen by him,” Hakura said.

There are signs that Erdogan is concerned by the spread of the investigations. When prosecutors asked in February to question the national intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, an Erdogan appointee, the prime minister pushed through a law within a week that shields Turkey’s spies from the judiciary.

“Even though the party and the congregation deny it, there’s a serious battle,” Open Source’s Yesilada said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Emre Peker in Ankara at epeker2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

Gulen vs. Erdogan, a struggle for power in Turkey and abroad.

http://www.economist.com/node/21548261

Turkey’s political in-fighting

Erdogan at bay

The Turkish prime minister faces new enemies both at home and abroad

Feb 25th 2012 | ANKARA | from the print edition

FOR nine years Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved smoothly from one victory to another, winning three elections in a row with a bigger share of the vote each time. He has seen off coup plots by once-omnipotent generals and attempts by their cronies in the judiciary to ban his mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party. So far the economy has survived the financial crisis largely unscathed. And although membership talks with the European Union are stuck, relations with America are (in the words of the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who recently spent five hours with Hillary Clinton) in “a golden age”.

The new philosophy in a bureaucracy once steeped in corruption and sloth is that the state exists to serve the citizen and not the other way round. The old maxim that “the Turk’s only friend is a Turk” has been replaced by growing confidence in Turkey’s regional clout. Mr Erdogan’s rivals are riven by internal feuds. A recent opinion poll suggests that if a new election were held today AK would get 54% of the vote, four points more than in 2011.

But the picture is less rosy when you consider a nasty power struggle between Mr Erdogan and Turkey’s most influential Islamist movement, led by an imam living in Pennsylvania named Fethullah Gulen. Commanding a sprawling global empire of media outlets, businesses and schools, the so-called Gulenists, who mix piety with hard-nosed pragmatism, are said to have infiltrated the judiciary and the police force. Their next target was apparently Turkey’s MIT spy agency. This story gained credence this month when an allegedly pro-Gulenist prosecutor summoned the MIT chief, Hakan Fidan, an Erdogan protégé, for questioning in a case against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), amid claims that some of his men may have joined its ranks.

A furious Mr Erdogan responded by getting the AK-dominated parliament to pass a law that makes judicial interrogation of MIT officials subject to prime ministerial consent. The offending prosecutor was taken off the case, and a group of suspected pro-Gulenist officials in the Istanbul police force were reassigned.

Although Mr Erdogan appears to have won the first round, the breach may yet have a big effect on his political fortunes, because the Gulenists may withdraw their support. The affair is complicated by Mr Erdogan’s health. He has recently had two operations, amid persistent rumours that he is being treated for colon cancer. He and his doctors deny this. But would-be successors within AK are said to be switching to the Gulenists. It is surely in both sides’ interest to make peace.

The Gulenists and AK had been making common cause against the army. Gulen-affiliated newspapers brimmed with leaked documents exposing army mischief that have been used as evidence in the Ergenekon trial against alleged coup-plotters. But with hundreds of officers behind bars and the threat of a coup dispelled, the alliance has frayed. Some argue that this reflects policy differences. More probably it is about power, with the Gulenists (in Mr Erdogan’s view) wanting too much. Even before the MIT row, the prime minister was said to be concerned about the arrest of journalists, which damages Turkey’s image. There are now at least 70 in jail, mostly on thinly supported terrorism charges. Some of them, notably Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, had been highly critical of the Gulenists.

Yet Mr Erdogan’s own democratic credentials are not so shiny. Hundreds of students are on trial or in prison for such “crimes” as protesting against dam projects. Anti-government journalists have been sacked by media bosses fearful of jeopardising other business interests. The most recent was Nuray Mert, a columnist for Milliyet, an establishment daily, and a fierce critic of Mr Erdogan’s decision to opt for a military solution to the Kurdish problem. This took a tragic turn in December when Turkish warplanes mistakenly bombed a group of Kurdish smugglers along the Iraqi border, killing 34 Kurds, mostly teenagers. As Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, also points out, Mr Erdogan has been quick to pass legislation to protect his spy chief but has done nothing to amend vaguely worded anti-terror laws used to jail thousands of dissidents, including nine MPs.

Equally worrying is the lack of progress on the new constitution that Mr Erdogan vowed would crown his third term. A parliamentary committee meant to be drawing up a draft has done such groundbreaking things as inviting the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Bartholemew I, to air his views. But there are still concerns about Mr Erdogan’s ambition to create a strong presidency, presumably designed for himself. And it is hard to see the whole process being completed without consent from the largest Kurdish party. Mr Erdogan is unwilling to talk to it unless it publicly disavows the PKK. Never mind that his own men, led by Mr Fidan, were secretly negotiating with the PKK until last summer, when it escalated its campaign of violence.

The descent of Syria, Turkey’s southern neighbour, into civil war is another concern. After years of cultivating the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, the Turks are betting on the collapse of his regime. They have offered sanctuary to commanders of the rebel Free Syrian Army and other members of Syria’s opposition. Mr Davutoglu is said to have lobbied Mrs Clinton to intervene but, especially in an election year, the Americans will be cautious. The longer Mr Assad hangs on, the greater the risk of his turning against Turkey. Resuming his father’s support for the PKK or stoking unrest among Turkey’s small Alawite population may both be options.

And then there are worries over the economy. By the standards of its Greek neighbour, Turkey looks scintillating: a budget deficit under 2% of GDP, a public debt of only 40% and GDP growth in 2011 of almost 8%. Yet a current-account deficit of over 10% of GDP points to overheating, and the economy is now slowing sharply. Mr Erdogan’s next fights may prove to be his toughest yet.