The unbearable lightness of media in Erdogan’s Turkey
Police raids on pro-Gulen media outlets are seen as a prelude to suppressing the media opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prior to the snap elections.
My fellow columnist Kadri Gursel, in his recent piece titled “Turkish daily exposes transfer of weapons to IS,” already informed Al-Monitor readers about police raids at numerous media outlets. These outlets under attack are owned by Koza Ipek Holding and include the daily newspapers Bugun and Millet and the TV channels BugunTV and Kanalturk.
The owner, Akin Ipek, is known to be a sympathizer of Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States for 16 years. For the past two years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has portrayed Gulen as “public enemy No. 1.”
Actually, Gulen and Erdogan were close allies in the first decade of rule by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The Gulen movement, thanks to its position and well-entrenched followers in the security forces and the judiciary, helped Erdogan travel safely through the hostile territory of the Turkish state system, which was known for its aversion to anything Islamic or, worse, Islamist. The Gulen movement helped Erdogan and his government overcome the threat coming from the military by rounding up scores of officers, including high-ranking officers of the general staff, and sending them to jail.
Then, their roads parted. All trials against the military have been dubbed show trials. Erdogan even made a Faustian bargain with the military, declaring the Gulen movement “putschists attempting a coup."
