“If this is called a witch hunt, then yes, we perform a witch hunt,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a May 10 “consultation and assessment meeting” of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). He was referring to the purge and reshuffling within the Turkish judiciary and police with the clear aim of dismantling the “parallel state” allegedly formed by the Fethullah Gulen movement. “In order to sterilize this dirty water that contaminated the milk, we will either boil or molecularize it,” Erdogan added, using a biological reference to justify an operation on state and society.

Students of political history will probably note that these are not healthy signs for any country, and Erdogan’s self-acknowledged “witch hunt” deserves a closer look. It also begs revisiting popular political concepts within Islam, because both the Erdogan government and the Gulen movement are self-declared Islamic actors.

Let’s begin with the question of what's driving Erdogan to conduct this witch hunt: He felt targeted by the “parallel state” accused of having a conspiratorial hierarchy and purpose, similar to what Freemasons have sometimes been accused of in European history. (One must grant that many independent journalists have also claimed that the Gulen movement, indeed, has too many members in Turkey's key institutions, forming a formidable partisan force.) The irony here is that until a few years ago, Erdogan saw his current nemesis as not a threat but an asset because back then, both Erdogan’s AKP and the Gulen movement had a common enemy. Turkey’s secularist establishment, particularly the military, was a threat to all religious conservatives. But once the common enemy was defeated, the two sides began to disagree, and ultimately fight. The corruption investigation opened against Erdogan’s inner circle in December and the subsequent release of scandalous recordings of wiretapped conversations is widely seen in Turkey as a part of this AKP-Gulen war.

However, with the AKP's electoral victories on March 30, Erdogan seems to have gained the upper hand. Now he is willing to destroy the threat for good by exposing and purging the “parallel state.” Thus the pro-Erdogan media is busy revealing the enemy's wrongdoings, which include excessive arrests and other abuses during the legal cases opened between 2007-2011 over alleged military coup attempts. The same “parallel state” is also accused of wiretapping thousands of prominent figures, with bogus claims of membership in mythical terrorist organizations. (For example, see the recent piece by Ibrahim Karagul, the editor-in-chief of Yeni Safak, explaining how he was subjected to surveillance and even framing for major crimes.) These are serious claims that need to be heard in court.