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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

I just got back from visiting family in Turkey.

Turkey is in a really weird place. On the one hand, Erdogan is a corrupt tyrant who has done some inexcusably horrible things. On the other hand, he has thoroughly cleaned the cemaat infestation. For the record, cemaat refers to people loyal to a man named Fethullah Gulen, who is a radical Islamist and a very controversial figure in Turkey. You can read more about him here:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/who-fethullah-g%C3%BClen-13...

Anyway, Internet blockages like this usually precede widespread police operations. Based on what I can gather from Turkish newspapers right now, it looks like HDP headquarters is being raided by the police as part of a terror investigation (which is kind of a big deal). HDP is a pro-Kurdish, pro-minority party that got a lot of votes in the last election and prevented Erdogan's AKP from reaching parliamentary majority.

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Hitler got rid of the brown coats when he didn't need them anymore also.

Fethullah Gulen and Erdogan were besties until about 3 years ago.

It's also a bit funny that you call this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen a Terrorist, if he is he has the best poker face of all of them so far.

While he probably has more than one agenda, neither the US, Israel nor any EU nation has never put him or his followers on any watch list, and at least publicly he strongly condemned any act of terrorism and incitement. He is such and "islamist" that he was probably the only major religious leader that didn't put the blame on Israel for the Flotilla incident and rather said that the organizers should have cooperated with them and put more effort into ensuring that radicals would not join the flotilla, this doesn't exactly seem like something a Terrorist would say publicly on several occasions and probably didn't made him any friends on either side of the political spectrum.

If you want here is a decent paper on him and his movement by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs https://www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/resea...

I never called him a terrorist. Please read more carefully.

Also, since you obviously haven't read the link I provided, here's an excerpt from a speech he gave in 1999 in which he talks about... well, I'll let you be the judge:

"You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers. . . . Until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria, . . . like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. . . . The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it. . . . You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey . . . . Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence . . . trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here, [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here."

Sorry you just called them an "infestation", and him a radical Islamist.

Terrorism and corruption charges in Turkey don't mean much, Erdogan has used this to demolish every political opposition, close newspapers, put anyone from judges to school teachers in prison and to cleanse the military which was the only organization with the mandate and ability to keep Turkey in the image that Kemal Ataturk envision.

That sounds like the Zionist Diaries. Or maybe it's that long missing one from Hitler himself?

Tbh it could come from any "revolutionary" pablum, simply because that's how you do it: put your avanguardist elements in place until conditions are right for the "big switch". Even legitimate parties in legitimate democracies follow this rulebook to reach and maintain power.

Need a source for that quotation, or it could be from anywhere.

It's strange that Gulen is considered a radical islamist by some and a super pacifists, modern muslim by others. How is this possible?

For some background, he's well supported in international muslims with seemingly more forward-thinking views.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement

I personally would not trust anything I read about him on Wikipedia, since it can be edited by just about anyone, and he is estimated to have about 5 million followers. Read the link I provided - it's a lot more objective and provides a lot of historical perspective as well.

Do you trust Erdogan media more than wikipedia?

His source has nothing to do with Erdogan. It's a conservative American think tank.

The parent is saying something controversial but he's being articulate about it. Look at his writings with more charity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Journal_(New_York_City)

It's hard to see Gulen as worse than Erdogan, who has invaded Iraq, oppressing his population, reignited war with and is killing Kurdish people, and building relations with Russia. He's outlawed criticism of himself and arrested people for it, shut down newspapers ...

> he has thoroughly cleaned ...

The upside to every dictator, with just different endings to the sentence. Too bad for the innocent people imprisoned, whose lives have been ruined. No problem for you and me, so it's a good thing.

Freedom and rights mean for everyone else; everyone believes in freedom for themselves.

There were many lawsuits against Gulen and his sympathizers (Hizmet movement) even in US - but he was acquitted many times. Erdogan put all the blame on him and his followers to suppress corruption investigation into his circle of politicians and even family members. Read about Reza Zarrab prosecuted in US right now.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/iran-san...

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