Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul hosted a conference entitled “Fethullah Gulen’s Perspectives on Combating Extremism in the Muslim World,” jointly organized by the local Tolerance and Dialogue Center and Baran-i Omid Publishing. Leading Afghan officials called attention to Gulen’s approach and education for an efficient and permanent solution to extremism.
Turkish charity organization Kimse Yok Mu has organized an international cartoon competition titled “refugees” in order to raise awareness of the difficulties facing migrants who fled their homelands and set out on dangerous journeys to Europe.
Attorneys for a reclusive Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania asked a federal judge late Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit that claims he orchestrated human rights abuses in his native Turkey, denouncing it as “pure political theater” by the Turkish government.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged during a speech on Tuesday that he has personally been pursuing a “fight” against the so-called “parallel structure,” adding that his administration is ready to cooperate with district governors to “clear” its members from state bureaucracy.
At a time when the faith-based Gülen movement, also known as the Hizmetmovement, is under heavy government pressure in Turkey, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, academics and scholars have praised the movement at a panel at the House of Lords for its efforts against the spread of radical Islamism and violence across the world.
When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) took office in 2002 under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the party’s commitment to democratization was promising. As many political scientists agreed, the first years of AKP rule were a success story, and that was why, with its secular multi-party democracy and its Muslim character, Turkey had emerged as a role model for the Muslim world.