Washington has refused to either confirm or deny allegations that its security intelligence agency had been involved in spying on top-level Turkish officials, while Turkish critics fear it could make the country’s security vulnerable, if the allegations are true.
Former Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin has denied allegations in a recent police report which claimed that he helped the so-called ‘parallel structure’ setting up its own cadre at the Justice Ministry during his term in office.
A National Police Department report accusing the Gülen movement of being a terrorist organization without any solid evidence is being treated as a document not to be questioned by the judiciary, which apparently views it as an “instruction” by higher-ups, recent investigations have indicated.
The defamation campaign against the Gülen or Hizmet movement, which the Turkish president and his political Islamist Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government accuse of illegally wiretapping government officials, collapsed after it became clear that foreign security and intelligence agencies were involved in eavesdropping on senior Turkish officials.
The assaults on Korean tourists and a Uighur chef, who were mistaken for Chinese people, in İstanbul last week have shown the extent of damage dealt to this moderate nation of Turks by the Islamist rulers, who provide political clout to hate crimes and xenophobia in order to sustain their waning power in the government.
Turkish basketball player Enes Kanter, who has made no secret of his links to the Gülen movement — a civil society group also known as the Hizmet movement that is inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen — has stated that he has been excluded from Turkey’s basketball team for the 2015 European Basketball Championship due to his beliefs.
Publicly traded Islamic bank Bank Asya’s owners have launched 100 cases against the seizure by regulators, with lawyer Süleyman Taşbaş emphasizing that lawsuits can also be filed on behalf of the 18,000 shareholders corresponding to the B Group shares.
Online government whistleblower Fuat Avni has claimed that the government is concocting a plan to blame the clandestine assassinations of the ‘deep state’ and the violent domestic acts planned by the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) on the Hizmet movement.
Requests submitted by the Samanyolu Group seeking permission for two of its stations to shoot programs in the gardens of two mosques in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul during the holy month of Ramadan have been turned down by the İstanbul Mufti’s Office.