Pro-Erdoğan columnist: Gülen followers soon won’t be able walk freely in the US

Pro-government Yeni Şafak daily columnist Hikmet Genç, a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Thursday that followers of the faith-based Gülen movement, who are blamed by the Turkish government for a failed coup last year, will soon not be able walk freely in the US, threatening them by saying, “Don’t rest at easy at night.”

Speaking on a TV show with another pro-Erdoğan columnist, Ersoy Dede, on Thursday evening, Genç targeted Gülen-linked journalists who fled to the US following the failed coup.

“They are freely walking there [in the US] now. But they won’t be able to soon. Let me tell you this: Don’t rest easy at night,” he said.

Underlining that there is no peace for Gülen movement followers either in Turkey or any other part of the world, Genç said destroying the Gülen movement and its followers is their struggle and that it must be passed on to coming generations.

“We will destroy them all here in our time, God willing. They will be buried like dogs among crosses [Christians] in places like Pennsylvania. They will not be able to find an imam to recite [the final prayer at their funeral]. They will be buried in the land of infidels. There is no place even for their coffins here. I won’t accept it. Their coffins should be burned. I have no respect [for their dead],” he said.

On Tuesday another pro-Erdoğan columnist, Cem Küçük, along with journalist Fuat Uğur said Turkish intelligence should kill family members of jailed Gülen followers in order to turn the inmates into operatives for the Erdoğan regime.

He also talked about excuses about probable deaths of Gülen followers such as traffic accidents, suicides, mass suicides, death from excessive alcohol use, death from overdose, jumping off a bridge due to debt and health problems.

He said Israel would kill 15-20 Gülen followers all around the world if its government was targeted by a graft probe or a coup attempt.

Turkey’s President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government accused Gülen movement followers, especially those in the state bureaucracy, of attempting to overthrow the government by means of a graft probe in December 2013 and a failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Immediately after the putsch the AKP the government along with Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.

Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

Amid an ongoing witch-hunt targeting the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 16 said 48,739 people had been jailed and eight holdings and 1,020 companies seized as part of operations against the movement.

Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.

Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants since July 15 through government decrees issued as part of an ongoing state of emergency.

According to Ministry of Justice data, there are currently 384 prisons with a capacity of 207,279 in Turkey; however, the total number of inmates was 228,983 as of October 2017.

The Turkish Ministry of Justice plans to build 228 new prisons with a capacity of 137,687 in the next five years.

Published on Turkish Minute, 16 December 2017, Saturday