Police report accuses Gülen based on fabricated ‘gov't media' stories

According to a story reported by the news portal Rota Haber, the National Police Department drafted a secret report in June 2014 mostly based on stories in pro-government media which claim that the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen is the leader of a terrorist organization and is responsible for the wiretapping of a classified meeting at the Foreign Ministry.

The report, original pages of which were published on the website of Rota Haber on Tuesday, includes an organizational chart that alleges that Gülen -- a scholar who lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania and is targeted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accuses him of being the leader of a “parallel structure” nested within the state -- is the leader of a terrorist organization.

The report is written by the intelligence unit of the National Police Department and argues that the “Gülen organization” aims to gain control of the state by infiltrating government institutions by means of young people who are devoted to its ideology. It is further argued that the organization does not merely want to become the main decision-making body in domestic and foreign policy decisions but also obtain the global spiritual leadership of the Muslim world.

One of the most serious allegations in the report refers to the controversial and critical voice recording of a meeting at the Foreign Ministry involving the top national security officers of the country that was leaked on the Internet just a few days before the local elections of March 30. Although no concrete evidence was found and no legal investigation has been launched, government officials were quick to put the blame on the “parallel structure” -- a reference to the Hizmet movement, which is inspired by the teachings of Fethullah Gülen.

The secret security report that Rota Haber published argues that confidential conversations among high-level government officials were tapped and leaked through social media accounts that are affiliated with the “Gülen organization.” The report states in a footnote that the leaked video was uploaded to Twitter by a Twitter account named @secimgudumu, which the report claims to be sympathetic toward the Gülen group.

In the leaked voice recording which was considered a serious breach of national security, Turkish high-level officials discuss possible scenarios about involvement in Syria, while assuming that their dialogue is confidential. Following the leak, the Turkish government placed a ban on media coverage of the details of the dialogue.

The report includes also a list of the tactics and strategies of the “Gülen organization,” arguing that it aims to infiltrate the official hierarchy of the state bureaucracy. The report further claims that the “Gülen organization” aims to disrupt political and economic stability by means of its media. The report also holds the “Gülen organization” responsible for the bugs that were found in the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in December 2011.

In addition, according to the report, the “Gülen organization” opened and managed several social media accounts to discredit the government following the Dec. 17 corruption probe in which four ministers had to resign from their posts due to their involvement in corruption. The police report refers to Dec. 17 as a “coup attempt” against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, even though there has been no court decision supporting this conclusion.

All of the accusations within the police intelligence report mimic the allegations of the pro-government media, which has been conducting a smear campaign against Gülen and the Hizmet movement for months.

Published on Today's Zaman, 12 August 2014, Tuesday