It has been the same topic of discourse everywhere. And it won’t stop anytime soon because of the atrocities that have followed, all in the name of sanitising the country and arresting masterminds of the phantom coup. The news coming out of Turkey has been really disturbing to many, and equally baffling to the world.
The relations between Nigeria and Turkey have been traditionally cordial, and bilateral trade has grown over the years between them. The annual trade volume between Turkey and Nigeria was $1.2 billion by second quarter of 2016, and this consists of clothing, food, engines and automobile parts, as well as pharmaceuticals.
Gulen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, promotes a philosophy that comprises elements of moderate Islam and Sufi mysticism, free-market economics, and interfaith tolerance. That he has a wide following in Turkey (and elsewhere) is not in doubt. As for Erdogan, he can be an Islamist sultan or he can be the democratic leader of a trusted NATO ally. But he can’t be both, and the time has come to make him choose.
In an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya News Channel, Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen said he was confident that the United States will not extradite him. “The United States has a reputation in the world as a country that upholds the rule of law. So I trust they will follow the proper procedures,” Gulen told Al Arabiya’s New York Bureau Chief Talal al-Haj.
FRANCES SLEAP Dialogue can be hard work. It is an indisputably good idea for there to be meaningful contact between people of different religious, ideological and cultural groups, but to make that happen where it hasn’t yet happened is no mean feat. Between 2010 and 2014 I worked at the Dialogue Society, with people putting […]
On July 26, Turkish police stormed the house of Muhammet Cakir, a lawyer wanted for arrest on coup charges. Failing to find the lawyer at home, they detained his 86-year-old mother to force her son to surrender. She has been kept as hostage since.
It is hard to find a parallel for what has transpired in Turkey since last month’s failed coup without making comparison with the Nuremburg decrees of 1935 that legally ostracized Germany’s Jews and people of Jewish ancestry. Yet Nazi anti-Semitism had a clear and straight-forward rationale, while the popular furor in Turkey over the Hizmet bears the flavor of a personal grudge match between two one-time friends. No ideology. Just down and dirty, no holds barred.
The Mekong Dialogue Institute (MDI), a Turkish NGO based in Phnom Penh, on Monday denied any links to terrorism, although the organization was inspired by Fethullah Gulen, the man accused by the Turkish government of being behind last month’s failed coup in Turkey.
Fethullah Gulen and his movement are being purged not for terrorism, but for being unwilling to mindlessly follow the new elite ISMAIL SEZGIN Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declares that the 15 July coup attempt was orchestrated by the Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Yet, there is little concrete evidence against Gulen. Instead, the government has […]
Right-wing Reformist Bloc, the junior partner in Bulgaria’s minority coalition cabinet, has demanded that Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova explain to Parliament why the government turned over Turkish businessman Abdullah Buyuk to Turkey last week. “The Reformist Bloc expresses disagreement with the violation of basic principles that guide the coalition; for us these are the rule […]
Abdullah Buyuk was handed over to the Turkish authorities on August 10 after his political asylum request was denied. Two Bulgarian courts had blocked his deportation in March, saying that he was wanted for “political reasons” in Turkey, and that he could not be guaranteed a fair trial.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with an attempt to set fire to a Turkish cultural centre in the northern Austrian town of Wels, police said on Monday, at a time of heightened tension between Vienna and Ankara. The attack took place in early morning and the suspects, whom police declined to identify, were arrested immediately.