SP's Kamalak: MGK should discuss gov't Kurdish policy, not Hizmet movement

Felicity Party (SP) leader Mustafa Kamalak, commenting on a proclamation made by the National Security Council (MGK) on Wednesday, has said that instead of labeling the Hizmet movement as a “threat to national security,” the MGK should consider the government's Kurdish policy which, according to him, is leading to a “division of the country.”

The MGK, chaired by President Abdullah Gül, discussed in its February meeting the issue of “structures and activities that are a threat to peace and national security [of the Turkish people],” a phrase referring to a supposed “parallel state,” a term used by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when addressing the Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Erdoğan portrays the ongoing graft scandal, which has implicated high-ranking people close to his inner circle since Dec. 17, as a plot against his government perpetrated by the “parallel state,” in other words the Hizmet movement, a claim that has harshly been rejected by the movement.

In a reaction to the MGK's discussion over the Hizmet movement as a “threat to national security,” SP leader Kamalak said the Turkish government is “so panicked that it has no idea what it is doing.”

“It is moving down the wrong track and does not see the reality,” Kamalak said. Expressing his disappointment over the topic of discussion at the MGK meeting, Kamalak said, “The military will hopefully will invite the ruling party to have some good sense.”

In the meantime, criticizing the government's Kurdish policy, the SP leader said the MGK should instead have discussed this, what he called a “sensitive issue.”

“The country is going to be divided and the government is not interested in that. Instead [the government] is diverting the attention to the Cemaat [Hizmet movement] and thus distorting the country's agenda,” Kamalak said adding: “The state is in some ways withdrawing from those territories. The prime minister seems to have turned a blind eye to those places. He is face to face with heedlessness.”

Kamalak, who was also a victim of the Feb. 28, 1997 military coup, said that he believes the Hizmet movement has never done what Erdoğan accuses it of. Reiterating what had happened in the past, when religious individuals were targeted in Turkey, Kamalak said: “The religious segment of the population was charged with accusations and crimes they had never committed. The crime was committed by the people who were not charged. But when the smoke curtain was lifted, it became clear that the crimes were committed by others. Right now the situation is the same. Now, the Hizmet movement is being accused. However, I think the malefactor is not the Hizmet movement but foreign powers.”

Published on Today's Zaman, 28 February 2014, Friday