October 18, 2010

‘The Gülen movement should prove its innocence’

Bülent Korucu

A wave of reactions has followed the book of now-arrested Police Chief Hanefi Avcı. Even those who don’t find Avcı’s claims plausible don’t hesitate to add the sentence, “But the Gülen community should prove its innocence.” This places the burden of proof on the defendant. The idea of saying, “Well, the onus is on you to be discharged of a liability,” is not logical, let alone legal. Another sentence which is easy on the ears these days is, “The community should become more transparent.” Our elders used to call this sort of thing “teklif-i malayutak,” meaning an unendurable offer.

Transparency and the operational code of the Gülen movement

İhsan Yılmaz

During the course of the past few weeks, there has been a debate surrounding the Gülen movement and calls for the movement to be transparent.

I think these calls were misguided because they do not take into account the operational code of the movement and also seem to have a naive understanding of modern Turkish political history.