The rise of the Palace State: Turkey under the state of emergency

By Ihsan Gümüs, Onur Alka and Christoph Bultmann

The present volume by İhsan Gümüş, an author who, in a situation of persecution and oppression, writes under a pseudonym, is a collection of articles which were published on the website Platform for Peace and Justice in 2017 and 2018. They focus on the political development in Turkey following
the military action, or attempted coup, on 15 July 2016 and the corruption as well as the human rights abuses against different groups.

No democracy, no constitutional system that is orientated towards the protection of human rights can work ‘without the support of a strong, popular culture of liberty’. The book by İhsan Gümüş has the potential to motivate people who want to live in freedom and want to see others live in freedom to overcome moral obtuseness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Main-Donau Verlag
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9783946871262

Book preview

http://main-donau-verlag.de

Abbreviations

Editor’s Preface

This book is about the eclipse of human rights and democracy in Turkey. As the Main Donau publishing house we thank in particular Oğuzhan Albayrak, a human rights activist, who revised and edited the text for the benefit of the English-speaking reader and updated the statistical data based on the current political and economic situation. As a doctor of human rights law, this book is very much also my personal concern. Our special thanks go to Professor Christoph Bultmann for his judicious foreword.

We as Main Donau publishing house feel a responsibility to act for the sake of human rights and freedoms, which is why we exceptionally publish the book in English in order to reach a broader public.

Arhan Kardas

15. August 2019

About Oğuzhan Albayrak

Having graduated from Public Administration, Oğuzhan Albayrak started his career as a diplomatic agent in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey in 2009. As a Junior Diplomat he served in the General-Directorate of Bilateral Political Affairs – Europe and General-Directorate for the European Union. He was assigned to posts in various embassies of Turkey in Kuwait, Malta, Jerusalem (Consulate General) and Azerbaijan, respectively. He was dismissed from his position in February 2017 as a result of the massive political purge by the Turkish government against dissidents. He is currently living in exile in Germany and is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defenders e. V. (HRD) Association.

HRD is a non-profit and independent civil society organization campaigning to defend human rights and to help people facing persecution all around the world with a special focus on Turkey. HRD was established in 2018 in Cologne, Germany, by Turkish lawyers, former bureaucrats and entrepreneurs who are political asylum-seekers in Europe. HRD prepares reports concerning human rights violations, establishing contacts with other Human Rights NGOs and stakeholders, state officials and regional and international organizations. HRD also provides legal advice to victims, initiates legal procedures on behalf of the victims and prepares official petitions to the relevant UN Human Rights mechanisms.

Foreword

By Professor Christoph Bultmann

moral obtuseness is so much easier

(Martha Nussbaum, Not for profit, 2016)

The present volume by İhsan Gümüş, an author who, in a situation of persecution and oppression, writes under a pseudonym, is a collection of articles which were published on the website Platform for Peace and Justice in 2017 and 2018. They focus on the political development in Turkey following the military action, or attempted coup, on 15 July 2016 and the persecution of followers of Fethullah Gülen, i.e., the so-called Gülen movement. Gülen himself has been living in the

US

since March 1999, and readers may want to watch an interview, conducted by Tim Franks for the

BBC

Newshour on 27 January 2014, or read an interview, conducted by Jamie Tarabay and published in ‘The Atlantic’ on 14 August 2013, for a first impression of his teachings.¹ Excerpts from interviews over more than 20 years can be found in the book by Faruk Mercan, No return from democracy. A survey of interviews with Fethullah Gülen (2017).²

The articles by İhsan Gümüş are study material for scholars in the field of political sciences rather than for a theologian with an interest in interreligious dialogue. However, I have accepted the invitation to contribute a foreword to the present volume because it addresses an issue which I have also noticed myself: The almost complete silence in the media about the persecution of followers of Fethullah Gülen and the question of human rights in Turkey.

A few examples may illustrate this point, and since I cannot claim to have done a full survey of the debate in the media I prefer to put them as questions. In the German context: What can be read about the situation of followers of Gülen and the question of human rights in the weekly column ‘Meine Türkei (My Turkey)’ by Can Dündar in the newspaper ‘Die Zeit’? In the French context: What can be read about the situation of followers of Gülen and the question of human rights in the occasional articles by Nedim Gürsel which have been collected in his book Turquie libre, j’écris ton nom (2018)? In the British context: What can be read about the situation of followers of Gülen and the question of human rights in the book by Ece Temelkuran, How to lose a country. The 7 steps from democracy to dictatorship (2019)?³ With regard to publications like these, the collection of articles by İhsan Gümüş is a timely publication since it makes informations available which other authors do not share with their public.

To comment on day-to-day journalism from a scholar’s point of view is always an awkward thing to do. The accusation of wanting to curb the freedom of the press or of demanding unreasonable standards of research or of pushing one particular and partisan opinion or of not understanding the risk of losing one’s press card is easily at hand. From 2016 to 2018, I had the privilege of publishing a few contributions on the website European Journalism Observatory (

EJO

), so that readers of this foreword can find a number of critical observations on issues of journalism in relation to Turkey on this platform.⁴ In addition, I would like to quote from the book by Anthony Lester, Five ideas to fight for. How our freedom is under threat and why it matters (2016), who writes:

Freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are the foundation for every free and democratic society. Free expression is a necessary condition to realise the principles of transparency and accountability we need to protect human rights. It is the basis for the full enjoyment of many other human rights, such as freedom of assembly and association and the right to vote. – No law and no court can save our right to free speech without the support of a strong, popular culture of liberty. (p. 142)

In my understanding, Martha Nussbaum expresses the same concern with a ‘strong, popular culture of liberty’ when she states, in her preface to the 2016 edition of her book Not for profit. Why democracy needs the humanities:

The humanities have been threatened since their very beginning. Socratic questioning is unsettling, and people in power often prefer docile followers to independent citizens able to think for themselves. Furthermore, a lively imagination, alert to the situations, desires, and sufferings of others is a taxing achievement; moral obtuseness is so much easier. So we should not be surprised that the humanities are under assault, now as ever. The battle for responsible democracy and alert citizenship is always difficult and uncertain. But it is both urgent and winnable, and the humanities are a large part of winning it. (p. xxiii)

In the light of statements such as these, there can be no question about the legitimate and necessary function of independent and critical journalism for strengthening ‘responsible democracy’. At the same time, there should be limits to journalistic manipulations and campaigns; for this I like to refer to the Code of Ethics of the American Society of Professional Journalists (revised edition, 2014).⁵

The situation of followers of Gülen in Turkey and the question of human rights is not normally raised in debates about the political development of Turkey following the elections in 2011, because from 2014 the Turkish government has successfully pursued a propaganda campaign against the Gülen movement as a ‘terrorist organization’. In 2015, some campaign advisor even invented the acronym ‘

FETÖ

’ (Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü) which at the time was duly commented on by the journalist Deniz Yücel in the German newspaper ‘Die Welt’ (15 September 2015). Nevertheless, this classification has not only filled the pages of Turkish newspapers ever since, but it has become so popular that the exiled journalist Can Dündar, in his column in the German newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ (no. 29/2019, of 13 June 2019), now even claims that the German chancellor has started to use it. The press conference, held on 28 September 2018 during a state visit of President Erdoğan in Berlin, to which he refers in order to support his assertion – and which is documented on the website of the German government⁶ – shows that this journalistic claim is a gross manipulation.

In my view it remains a mystery why the diffamation of the Gülen movement has grown to such absurd proportions, since I take a pluralization within Islam through different reform movements as a natural development. In chapter 1, İhsan Gümüş convincingly states that ‘Islamism acts as a destructive force against Islam itself’. Why should there only be one monolithic state Islam in Turkey, represented and directed by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet)? Why should a ‘political’ Islam be a better religious option than a ‘civil’ Islam? Why should there not be room for a strand of Muslim piety based on teachings from the Sufi tradition? Why should believers not have a right to meet in the informal setting of a sohbet? Why should a secular worldview include the rejection of the human right of freedom of religion? And why should Muslims in diaspora communities not interact with Muslims in their home country or country of origin of their family as well as with Muslims in the society where they now live?

The Gülen movement, and more specifically the Journalists and Writers Foundation within the Gülen movement, founded in 1994, had started a series of conferences to address issues of Turkish society and politics in 1998 (‘Abant conferences’, normally concluding with an ‘Abant declaration’). It is difficult to see, at least for someone who is not a political scientist, why this line of engagement has not been more productive for all those who participated in it. For someone who tries, with an interdisciplinary interest, to understand the situation in Turkey, there are many interesting books to consult such as Ahmet Insel, La nouvelle Turquie d’Erdogan. Du rêve démocratique à la derive autoritaire (2015, 2nd edn. 2017), or Ece Temelkuran, Turkey. The insane and the melancholy (2015),⁷ or Sevim Dagdelen, Der Fall Erdogan. Wie uns Merkel an einen Autokraten verkauft (2016), or Inga Rogg, Türkei, die unfertige Nation. Erdoğans Traum vom Osmanischen Reich (2017), or Hasnain Kazim, Krisenstaat Türkei. Erdoğan und das Ende der Demokratie am Bosporus (2017). Yet the question why the persecution of followers of Fethullah Gülen is abandoned to almost complete silence in the media remains a disconcerting question.

One reason for this silence is, of course, the military action, or attempted coup, on 15 July 2016, which, in the public debate, is still a puzzle, since the preferences for ascribing the responsibility for this military action or attempted coup to whomever are never supported by sufficient evidence. In his book How democracy ends (2018), David Runciman, political scientist in Cambridge, writes in a chapter Coup! (in which Turkey only figures as a marginal issue):

The attempted coup of July 2016 can simultaneously be held up as evidence of two diametrically opposed threats to democracy. If it is taken at face value, the threat comes from the military: Turkish democracy is still weak enough that it could be overthrown by force. But if the coup is assumed to be fake, then the threat comes from the democratically elected government: Turkish democracy is now secure enough that popular support becomes the cover for would-be autocrats to hide behind. There is nothing – no event, no argument, no piece of evidence – that can determine to the satisfaction of all parties which view is correct. (p. 53)

However, even if so-called ‘dark forces’ within the Gülen movement in Turkey should have been involved in the planning of a coup – at whatever level of initiative or cooperation or persuasion or deception –, it is clear that the number of coup plotters does not amount to hundreds and thousands. Yet the victims of persecution and oppression are counted in tens and hundreds of thousands, families included. In his articles, İhsan Gümüş provides – at least to a high degree – a realistic picture of the situation of these victims and the ‘predatory practices’ which makes life in Turkish society almost impossible for them. On a more personal note I would like to quote a statement from a correspondence in June 2016 with a competent, yet anything but neutral critic of the Gülen movement who stated at the time:

I have no doubt that the vast majority of Gulen’s sympathizers are well-intentioned and would want to have no part in the kind of machinations I am talking about. I would not want to accuse millions for the sins of what appears to be a small group within the movement. It should be clear that my accusations are directed against this group rather than everyone associated with the movement.

The suggested differentiation seems to have very little impact on debates when the question of human rights is concerned. Given the competition for education, status, income, and influence in Turkish society between the numerous milieus – some more established, some more marginal – in this society, I wonder how far the issue of political emotions plays a role here. An enlightening discussion of such emotions is offered, for example, by Martha Nussbaum in her book Political emotions. Why love matters for justice (2013), especially the chapter ‘Compassion’s enemies: Fear, envy, shame’. Nussbaum writes:

[…] we need to ask what more can be done to support a culture of civic friendship that makes people less likely, at least, to be at odds with one another in this way. Envy attacks compassion in two ways: by narrowing the circle of concern and thus encouraging the ‘eudaimonistic thought’ to focus on the self, or one’s own group, and by inhibiting the sense of similar possibilities and the empathy that usefully accompanies it, suggesting that the envied are ‘other’ or ‘the enemy.’ (p. 345)

In a professional scholarly study of the communication, in the media as well as in scholarship, about the Gülen movement and the question of human rights it would be an interesting point to consider how a differentiation between ‘the vast majority of Gulen’s sympathizers’ and ‘a small group within the movement’ does or does not inform the reporting about and discussion of the situation in Turkey and what evidence is presented for allegations relating to this internal so-called ‘small group’.⁸

The author İhsan Gümüş also addresses the issue of the international reaction to the political development in Turkey since July 2016. Thus, in chapter 1, he refers to the European Union and the Council of Europe. It would again be a challenge for political scientists to analyse the relevant documents which have been offered to the public so far. Within the framework of the Council of Europe – which is founded on the European Convention of Human Rights –, the Commissioner for Human Rights has commented on the situation in Turkey in his/her four ‘Quarterly Activity Reports’ per year as well as his/her ‘Annual Activity Report’; these reports can be found on the respective website.⁹ The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (

PACE

) passed a resolution on Turkey on 25 April 2017 (Resolution 2156: ‘The functioning of democratic institutions in Turkey’) which again can be found on the respective website.¹⁰ The resolution (which cannot be quoted in full here)¹¹ contains statements such as:

[Article 7] Unfortunately, eight months after the attempted coup, the situation has deteriorated and measures have gone far beyond what is necessary and proportionate. The authorities have been ruling through decree laws going far beyond what emergency situations require and overstepping the parliament’s legislative competence. The Assembly is also concerned that most of the decree laws have so far not been approved (as required by the constitution), or their implementation monitored by the parliament, which it considers to be a serious democratic deficiency.

[Article 14] The Assembly expresses its deep concern about the scale and extent of the purges conducted in the public administration and the judiciary, and many other public institutions, targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement. The Assembly recalls its Resolution 2121 (2016) and notes that the Gülen movement, a former ally of the ruling party operating legally until 2014, was later labelled as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation/Parallel State Structure and considered a terrorist organisation. According to the Venice Commission, while civil servants have an obligation to be loyal to the State and not to take instructions from external sources, it is the duty of the State to clarify to all public servants when a hitherto well-established organisation is subsequently considered a threat to the national security – and becomes thus incompatible with public service – to avoid lack of information and clarity which could lead to unjust dismissals which may be seen as retroactive punishment.

[Article 16] The Assembly is extremely worried about the high number of individuals arrested and kept in custody waiting indictment, without access to their files. The Assembly expects the Turkish authorities to resort