Would Gul battle Turkey’s 'parallel state'?
Outgoing President Abdullah Gul’s distinction between Gulenist wrongdoers within the state and innocent members of the community shows the difficulty of dismantling the “parallel state” without crippling democracy and social peace.
In an article for the Al Jazeera Turk website, Etyen Mahcupyan, a leading unofficial ideologue of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), made the following description of “the new AKP”: “The AKP today is not only looking for a new prime minister, but is trying to shape new cadres and a new working modality that will guarantee the continuation of the settlement process [with the Kurds], the purge of the Hizmet [Gulenist] movement’s cadres from the bureaucracy and the introduction of a new constitution. Quite a large number of people in the party, its grassroots and constituency, suspect that [outgoing president Abdullah] Gul will be inadequate with respect to these ‘imperative moves.’”
In other words, “the new AKP” is said to be facing three major struggles, with some convinced that the outgoing Gul would be “inadequate” in waging those struggles. This is said to be the reason why Gul, the AKP’s first prime minister, is being cast out from the party despite his great popularity in the grassroots.
What Mahcupyan describes gently as “the purge of the Hizmet movement’s cadres from the bureaucracy” appears to be the most essential issue out of the three major struggles, given that Gul’s support for the “settlement process” is obvious and that he will no doubt lend staunch support to a “new constitution” if that constitution is to uphold European Union standards.
In Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s words, this essential issue means a “struggle against the parallel state.” As everyone is aware, the struggle targets the Fethullah Gulen community’s cadres within the state, which over the past year have evolved from Erdogan’s chief ally to his archenemy.
