In an explicit example of censorship, a panel of trustees who were appointed to Kaynak Holding last week in a government-backed move has decided to have copies of all books written by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen removed from the shelves of hundreds of NT Mağazaları bookstores across the country, Today’s Zaman has learned.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s televised remarks on Wednesday night suggesting that the witch hunt against members of Gülen movement will show no sign of abating under the new government has drawn condemnation from opposition political parties.
In Turkey, the increasing pressure over the freedom of press, property rights and authoritarianism have reached an alarming level. A recent report on the rule of law and respect for human rights inTurkey declared that Turkish government had been perpetrating systematic human rights violations since December 2013.
Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) Vice President Hüseyin Hurmalı told the Zaman daily on Sunday that the GYV, of which prominent Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen is the honorary president, serves an important global mission to help people understand Islam at a time when it is increasingly associated with radical Islamist organizations such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaeda.
World-famous philosopher, philologist and historian Prof Dr. Noam Chomsky gave a speech about the claims of ‘terrorist’ against Fethullah Gülen in Boston. Chomsky reminded that legendary leader Nelson Mandela, who was awarded with Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against racism and insistence on peaceful solution for racism, had been in ‘list of terrorists’.
In a strongly worded statement, Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has condemned the terrorist attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of over 100 people, calling everyone to join in rejecting the terrorism “without ifs and without buts.”
The government has intensified its campaign against the Hizmet movement, a civil society initiative inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen’s teachings promoting interfaith dialogue, peace and tolerance, by putting Gülen on a list of wanted terrorists despite the move lacking any legal basis.