We are not comfortable with insults

Ekrem Dumanlı

Insults and acts of arrogance seem to be endless. New allegations are fabricated on a daily basis and every allegation hurts feelings and emotions. Remarks and allegations referring to assassins, gangs, an illegal organization, phony scholars, traitors, spies and many other unreasonable claims and insults… In no other fight or argument has such disturbing and insulting discourse been used or employed. This is a terrible language and approach. We are not comfortable with strong and grave insults against millions of innocent people, including Fethullah Gülen.

Lying is the main source of all evil. Once you start telling lies, you will tend to tell more. Over the last few months, a huge number of lies have been said against the Hizmet movement. The pro-government media did not hesitate to fabricate lies. We issued denials against them all but they still continued to lie on the same matters. Not only that, they do not feel embarrassed. Everybody knows who began with the lies. We are not comfortable at all with the lies being told by people we once trusted and praised.

Private prep schools were the products of a demand for the attainment of justice in centralized placement exams and the principle of equal opportunity in education. The prep schools will be shut down through a fascist move based on an imaginary argument that such schools are human resources of the Hizmet movement. The Constitution has been violated and free enterprise has been shelved. For what? The idea being raised behind closed doors to eliminate the Hizmet movement is now being confirmed in political rallies. The prep schools which people set up were not closed down even during military administrations. It is obvious that those who are doing this without hearing any reasonable objections have made some promises. We are not comfortable with the secret tactics being used to close down prep schools and the lies on reform in education.

Interrogation rooms were designed and inspectors interrogated and questioned young students in these rooms. Even former coup makers during the Feb. 28, 1997 process did not rely on such excessive measures of repression and pressure. They held inspections and placed pressure but the new Feb. 28 repressors have excessively violated the law. As raids have been conducted in elementary schools, we see that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has been losing its conscience and that the people who we considered reasonable were bowing to unreasonable demands. Our consciences are hurt by the reluctance of the authorities to address the possible trauma experienced by pupils and the concerns of parents. When did you grow so brutal and merciless? We are not comfortable with the pressures against our young pupils and the setting up of interrogation rooms.

Turkish schools are the products of universal peace. They represent a great and ambitious effort to promote the Anatolian culture. People have embraced each other due to Turkish schools in 160 countries. People have learned to love and respect each other. In the meantime, children from different parts of the world have become familiar with Turkey. They sing songs in Turkish and recite poems in Turkish.

However, those who pay the utmost attention to politics view everyone who objects to some of their policies as enemies and everyone who supports their policies as friends; as such, this partisanship has resulted in hatred and leads to a grave outcome and situation: Those who used the national flag and national anthem to make a political ad spied on teachers who promoted the national anthem in different parts of the world to foreign presidents and prime ministers. We are not comfortable with them spying on these heroes and sons of Anatolia who serve in the Turkish schools.

Corruption was one of the three problems that would be combated. These three problems were corruption, bans and poverty. However, one day we were confronted with a brand new situation. The police found $4.5 million stashed in shoeboxes in the house of the director of a public bank. The police also found seven safe-boxes containing trillions of lira at the houses of the sons of some ministers. We learned that a religious justification (fatwa) had been obtained for bribery and a religiously forbidden act had been redefined as a religiously permitted one. We learned that phone calls had been made asking for the "zeroing" of the money in the homes of the prime minister's family but that these sums could not be disposed of completely and that 30 million euros had been left behind.

Several apartments had been bought with this leftover money. There were numerous villas and other real estate that had been acquired in the same manner. It was our expectation that the one talking would come out and shout, "It was not me who was speaking on the phone" and pave the way for legal proceedings to exonerate himself.

Yet, he spurted out a lie about a so-called "parallel state" and started hurling heavy accusations against innocent people. We cannot accept the fact that the people whom we had once supported, in the belief that they were morally upright people, had lost their test with money and developed a totally misguided attitude.

Social media had become a symbol of Turkey's pluralistic democracy. Internet use in the country had been at record levels. This lasted until the graft and bribery claims emerged. The prime minister talked about shutting down YouTube and Facebook after the elections. We didn't believe him. We didn't like the idea of severing the country's ties with the rest of the world. Moreover, the AK Party had taken reformist steps to promote freedom of thought. We just couldn't believe how the party could voice such prohibitionist suggestions. Therefore, we thought that YouTube and Facebook could not be banned. But one day the prime minister said: "Twitter, schmitter. We will wipe it out." We didn't believe him. But later that night, access to Twitter from Turkey was blocked. Turkey was no longer a member of the democratic league of nations and had been demoted to the league of Third World countries. We cannot accept the policy of banning social media, which makes the country an object of scorn around the world.

No insidious plan to make a private bank go bankrupt had been implemented in any country. They mobilized public resources in an effort to make the leading Islamic bank go bankrupt. If a bank were forced into bankruptcy, this could have triggered the collapse of other banks as well. They didn't care about this and committed a crime. Who gave the order to commit this crime and who pressured private companies to withdraw their money from this bank are all known. Those who recklessly implemented the conspiracy to force this bank out of business did not care about the potential risks the operation might pose for the entire economy. It was an order issued from the higher ranks. Thankfully, the noble nation democratically resisted this plan and thwarted the heinous conspiracy. Meanwhile, businessmen were intimidated and issued instructions, while those who refused to comply with these instructions were threatened. We cannot accept the use of public resources to pressure a leading privately run Islamic bank out of business.

Media freedom has long been problematic in Turkey. We had seen memorandums under military rule. But the media outlets had never seen such an extensive blockade as there is now. The government had journalists fired, figures who acted like commissars for the government were appointed as top executives in certain media organizations and the government phoned these pawns to manipulate news stories on newspapers and TV. Media groups were confiscated by fraudulent means and given away to former deputies. Sons-in-law were appointed to some of these groups as top managers. A secret fund was established with the contributions of several businessmen who were promised contracts for public tenders, and this fund was used to acquire media organizations that were later used for character assassinations and to launch political operations. A 70-year-old media boss was reduced to tears on the phone due to the heavy insults. We cannot accept that those who advocated pluralistic democracy in the past are now trying to exert full control over the media and tell everyone what to do.

The intelligence organization has clearly defined the establishment's purpose and modes of operation. It is clear that when it starts to get out of control, it will emerge as a monster and lead to great disasters. Those who relied on their image as a victim when coming to power started to take Middle Eastern countries as their model when they became the master of the state apparatus. Yet they were supposed to introduce Western standards in the intelligence units. The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) was glorified and given extra protection with every passing day, and the government opted to use MİT to establish an intelligence state. Information about people's private lives, bank accounts and movements started to be fed to MİT. Though we expected a transparent country, we found that it had been turned into an uncontrolled apparatus in which an elite oligarchic group governs the country. We cannot accept that all the promises of a transparent state have been abandoned and an intelligence state has been established.

Published on Sunday's Zaman, 23 March 2014, Sunday