Vicious cycle of quotations and freedom of expression

Kerim Balcı

The conspiracies forged about Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement sometimes wrongly named after him [as the Gulen Movement] are not simple lies stemming from hatred or fear. These are deliberate fabrications aimed at harming the movement and forcing it to suspend its activities worldwide.

The liars use a skillful method of “cycle of quotations,” where one particular liar writes a book in one particular country, then she or he is quoted in another country’s press selectively and the same lie finds its way back to the original country as if it were an established fact. The fabricated stories cross the borders without any truth-control and they are perceived as nothing but the truth by the prosecutors of those countries.

A bad -- but, hell, well-implemented -- example is the anti-Gülen campaign run in the Russian press recently. Only a week ago Natalya Ivanova wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta that through the Turkish schools in Russia Turkey was trying to found a Pan-Turkish Islamic State that is expanding from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China. The whole article is based on, not the facts about the movement, but on the fears of Russian and Central Asian leaders. Are they afraid of a Pan-Turkish movement? So, okay, let us say that the Hizmet Movement is a Pan-Turkish movement. Are they afraid of American influence in their backyard? Well, Fethullah Gülen is living in the US. What is that -- you want more? Ah ha, we also have the most recent fresh fabricated lies of Osman Nuri Gündeş! He is the super superhero of the Turkish intelligence. He says that CIA agents are working in the Turkish schools as English language teachers and that they have diplomatic passports. You know what? A total of 60 diplomatic passport-holding CIA agents were working in Uzbekistan alone. Think how many there can be in Russia. Close those schools, close them! KGB? Well, we don’t have any such observation from the KGB. Border controls? You know our border controls. They are all corrupt. We have to trust this 85-year-old Turkish agent. He knows best.

Ivanova was in fact duplicating what Viktor Bulavin wrote five days ago in Izvestiya: Turkish schools, pan-Turkish state, moderate Islamism, Greater Middle East project and of course the same liar as the sole source of information: Osman Nuri Gündeş. The so-called journalist Bulavin was a bit cleverer than the so-called journalist Ivanova. He managed to do a Google search and found the prosecutor’s indictment dated 1999 about Fethullah Gülen claiming that Gülen was encouraging his followers to enter state organs -- as if this were a crime. But, God knows why, he couldn’t find the unanimous 2008 decision of the Court of Appeals clearing Gülen of all of the allegations in the indictment. Who cares? Let the Russian authorities be alarmed and close down one or two schools in Russia. Then “their” Turkish friends will use this as an opportunity to show to the “ignorant and naïve” Turkish public that the Russians have realized the dangers of the movement and that the same should be done in Turkey also. They will write articles in their newspapers and then we will quote them in our articles. And then they will do the same. Long live the brotherhood of lies!

A day before Bulavin published his article, Moskovsky Komsomolez published a dossier about the Turkish schools, faring even better than Bulavin. The newspaper spoke to Prof. Semih Koray, a member of the Labour Party -- remember that the leadership of that party have all been imprisoned for the alleged crime of working with the Ergenekon terrorist organization -- and this prestigious professor told the Russians that the Gülen Movement is in fact not Turkish, but a half-Turkish half-American movement that is trying to establish a SuperNATO that weakens the countries these schools are active in. Interestingly the Russian journalist is not asking Koray about the schools opened in the US by the same group. Are they trying to weaken the US also? Is SuperNATO against the actual NATO? Or is the person making this claim: Are you super-stupid?

Who cares? Tell me who you are and I will find a suitable lie about the movement. Are you American? Then, the movement is even more Islamist than Osama bin Laden. Are you Russian? Then, the movement is a CIA long-arm. Are you a Turkish nationalist? Well, they have a master who was a Kurdish separatist. Are you stupid? Ohh, you are one of us… Come and celebrate our freedom of expression!

Published on Today's Zaman, 14 April 2011, Thursday

Related Article: Black propaganda at home, black propaganda in the world