Gulen movement slowly pushed underground under Erdogan's oppression?

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 25 By Rufiz Hafizoglu – Trend: Despite the religious factor was once in the background in Turkey, the country established on the basis of a secular state thinking of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, beginning from the ruling of the country's eighth president Turgut Ozal, political Islam has partially revived. Turkey’s political Islam has entered a phase of significant progress during the activity of the first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, founder of the “National opinion” movement. The Turkish Justice and Development Party is currently in power. The main reason for its political triumph in Turkey in 2002 was keeping away the incumbent President Erdogan away from the "National Vision" movement. This also served to his straying from such a concept as "sheikh and murid" (sheikh and follower), which is practiced in many Islamic movements in the Middle East. After the Justice and Development Party came to power, the political Islam became an integral part of Turkey’s political life. Even the Republican People's Party of Turkey, which is considered the main oppositional party, from time to time had to carry out internal reforms applying to the religious people in the country. However, today, there is quite a different situation in Turkey. Those who at one time worked for the common ideas and goals, now have different views. In other words, the old friends have become enemies. Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz even said that ‘people with whom we shared bread and salt, betrayed us’. What is the cause of the deepening chasm between Turkish government and Fethullah Gulen and his movement in general? Undoubtedly, alongside with the policy of rapprochement with Iran pursued by Erdogan on the post of prime minister, his more independent policy against Israel became one of the main reasons of this contradiction. From the point of view of fulfilment of further goals, this is unacceptable for Gulen, who is an enemy of Iran and a friend of Israel. Naturally, such a policy of Erdogan didn’t go “unpunished” – since then a lot has happened in the country. The main purpose of this was to force Erdogan and his team by all possible means to resign. There was an expectation that following this, Gulen, who was under the guardianship of the US, will return to Turkey as a leader, like Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. Following all these developments, the court ruled on the arrest of Gulen, who was satisfied with controlling the developments from afar. The court’s decision was perceived ambiguously. Many analysts assessed this decision of Erdogan as a step directed at the “surrender” of all the Islamists in the country. When analyzing in details the developments, it is possible to see that the purpose of this decision was in fact to shake the Islamists. At least, it was exactly after these events that the Nursists (followers of the ideological religious movement of Said Nursi) said that they didn’t share the views of Gulen about Erdogan and called the actions of Gulen a betrayal towards the homeland. There is an undeniable merit of Deputy Prime Minister Beshir Atalay and Chief of the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey (MIT) Hakan Fidan in exposure of these plans directed against Turkey. Following the decision about Gulen’s arrest, extradition of the “revolution” leader from the United States is one of the main issues facing the Turkish government. Despite the fact that Turkish officials declared their readiness to take all necessary steps for Gulen’s extradition, the US made it clear that this was impossible. If we consider the “experience” of Gulen, who is under the care of the United States, and his supporters in chaos creation, as well as the upcoming parliamentary election in Turkey (in June 2015), one can say with confidence that the extradition of Gulen is still expected in the near future. --- Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Arabic news service, follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Follow us on Twitter @TRENDNewsAgency