I was in Turkey in 2004. I was struck by how friendly everyone was and how they revere Attaturk, the founder of the modern state and the founder of secular Turkey’s culture. That may change. When we were entering the Blue Mosque, there were stern young men who did not look friendly and who were there to ensure that shoes were removed and that women wore veils.
My wife wears a head scarf in the Blue Mosque of Istanbul.
On the other hand, here is Annie with a Turkish Army officer who thought she looked just fine without a veil. I like Turkey and think of it as a model for what we are trying to do in Iraq.
Now, that may be changed by an obscure man living in the US.
The parallels with Khomeni and 1979 are too serious to ignore.
Few U.S. policymakers have heard of Fethullah Gülen, perhaps Turkey’s most prominent theologian and political thinker. Self-exiled for more than a decade, Gülen lives a reclusive life outside Philadelphia, Pa. Within months, however, he may be as much a household a name in the United States as is Ayatollah Khomeini, a man who was as obscure to most Americans up until his triumphant return to Iran almost 30 years ago.
While Gülen supporters jealously guard his image in the West, he remains a controversial figure in Turkey. According to Cumhuriyet, a left-of-center establishment daily — Turkey’s New York Times — in 1973, the Izmir State Security Court convicted Gülen of “attempting to destroy the state system and to establish a state system based on religion;” he received a pardon, though, and so never served time in prison. In 1986, the Turkish military — the constitutional guardians of the state’s secularism — purged a Gülen cell from the military academy; the Turkish military has subsequently acted against a number of other alleged Gülen cells who they say infiltrated military ranks.
The Erdogan government took over Parliament in 2002 and placed many of their members in key positions in the judiciary.
On May 5, 2006, the Ankara Criminal Court overturned the verdict against Gülen. While a public prosecutor — a secularist hold-out — appealed the court’s action, the process is now nearing conclusion. Gülen’s supporters are ecstatic. His slate wiped clean, Gülen has indicated he may soon return to Turkey.
This would be very bad news. In another example of her clumsy manipulation of other people’s business, Condaleeza Rice is about to interfere on the side of the Erdogan government. This would be a bad mistake and brings back memories of Carter’s representative desribing Khomeni as a “Muslim saint” before his return to Tehran and the Islamist Revolution.