Gülen, Ecevit and the Rising Tension

Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric and scholar who preaches understanding and tolerance, is now under threat of being apprehended by police and sent to prison for setting up an organization against the current system...

Gülen is currently in the United States undergoing medical treatment for a heart and diabetic condition and is in no shape to travel home. So the court order to arrest him is rather a gesture which once again shakes a stick at those who support moderate Islamists in Turkey.

Gülen's followers in Turkey are very moderate and modest people who have supported the educational drive in Turkey, set up schools at home and abroad and won wide acclaim. Even Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who is an ardent anti-fundamentalist, has a lot of praise for the schools.

Gülen and his followers have set up giant commercial establishments with the sole aim of financing the schools. This is similar to the efforts displayed by Tepe Holding Group in financing Ihsan Dogramaci's successful Bilkent University.

Gülen and his people have done nothing but serve this country and also support moderation and goodwill. Yet, we still want to harm them by sending Gülen to prison. Isn't this odd?

Don't we want peace and stability in this country? If so why are we creating all these artificial problems and trying to sabotage internal peace?

Why has the government created the current tensions in which the president has been put in a position to reject a decree with the power of law which was simply designed to sack tens of thousands of civil servants simply on charges of being separatists or religious activists?

It was Prime Minister Ecevit who kept talking about taking care not to spoil the hard earned stability in Turkey while his own government has prompted a serious crisis with the president.

Gülen and the latest friction between the presidency and the government could all have been averted, but it seems there was no desire to stop all this. On the contrary some hands went to work to spoil the current atmosphere and create havoc.

All that was needed was for the government to shelve its plan to issue the decree with the power of law. Yet, we see that the government opted for a collision course with the president, jeopardizing the political stability in Turkey. If the government is so sure of its case it could have easily pushed the law regarding the civil servants through Parliament in October and thus overridden any presidential veto. But it seems the government is unsure of whether its own deputies will actually support such a bill and thus wants to create a fait accompli by forcing the president's hand.

Thus we create complicated problems for ourselves and then complain about stability... Doesn't the prime minister see all this?

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