Unlike the perception that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tried to create, with the help of tremendous media power, the contention in the run-up to the elections was never between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Hizmet movement (or the so-called foreign forces that colluded with it).
On Thursday night Samanyolu Haber TV news channel was the latest to face a cyber attack, as readers have at times also recently been unable to access the websites of the dailies Zaman, Today’s Zaman and Taraf, as well as the Cihan news agency, particularly since the night of the local elections on March 30.
Zaman correspondent Tuğba Mezararkalı, who was told by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to change her job and leave the Zaman daily during a press conference held on Friday, has said Erdoğan is clearly intervening in freedom of the press, stating she did not begin her job in Zaman, where she has been working for four years, on the prime minister’s orders and would not leave her job on his orders as well.
In what is seen as a smear campaign against Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, the pro-Erdoğan English-language Daily Sabah has rehashed old and refuted claims that Gülen is somehow linked to a 2006 attack on the Turkish Council of State by Alparslan Arslan, a lawyer who carried out the armed assault.
The champion of this year’s Higher Education Exam (YGS) university entrance examination, Oğuz Türkyılmaz, who prepared for the exam with the Hizmet movement-affiliated FEM University Preparation School in Malatya, says he owes most of his success to his prep school teachers.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has over time turned out to be wrong or self-contradictory in his allegations over a number of issues in the past few years, which has cast doubts on his credibility as well as the credibility of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government in the eyes of the people.
The Islamic bank has been in the spotlight since Turkish media reported that state-owned companies and institutional depositors loyal to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had withdrawn TL 4 billion ($1.8 billion), or some 20 percent of the bank’s total deposits, because the bank’s founders include sympathizers of cleric Fethullah Gülen, a former-ally-turned-critic of Erdoğan.
Nurullah Albayrak, Gülen’s lawyer, said the decision to cancel the scholar’s passport is politically motivated and has no legal basis. He said Gülen was granted a green passport after his application to the relevant authorities following the adoption of Article 4 of Law No. 5682, which allows certain state officials and retired or resigned public servants to apply for a green passport after a review of their status during their work.
Former interior minister and Justice and Development Party (AK Party) İstanbul deputy Abdulkadir Aksu said on Thursday that Turkish schools abroad serve as islands of peace, adding that he is looking forward to this year’s Turkish Language Olympiads.
Islamic theologians coming together in a workshop organized by the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) have condemned recent allegations directed at the faith-based Hizmet movement by top government officials, stating that it is unislamic to engage in lies, slander and defamation.