PM’s adviser accuses Gülen movement of plotting against Turkish army, nation

ISTANBUL

PM Erdoğan’s chief political adviser, Yalçın Akdoğan, has blasted Islamist scholar Fethullah Gülen’s movement. CİHAN Photo

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief political adviser, Yalçın Akdoğan, has blasted Islamist scholar Fethullah Gülen’s movement, the Cemaat, in a column in which he raved about his leader.

“He [the prime minister] knows well that the ones who machinated against their own country’s army, national intelligence, national bank and much-loved political authority will not do anything for the sake of this country,” Akdoğan wrote in a column published Dec. 24 in daily Star, a steadfast government ally.

“He knows that the ones seeing every road allowable to reach a purpose creates sick understandings,” he wrote in his article titled “Do they have light [nur in Turkish] or pommel in their hands,” which can be interpreted as a reference to trhe Nur Cemaati that Gülen’s movement originated from.

The high-level graft probe that has shaken the political establishment has exposed a bitter feud between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and Gülen, whose followers hold key positions in the police, judiciary and secret services.

Since the beginning of operation on Dec. 17, former allies, the prime minister and influential Islamic scholar Gülen, has been in an ongoing war of words.

Claiming the graft probe was “actually a plot against the government and the nation schemed by an ill-intended alliance that has local and international components,” Erdoğan targeted Gülen, without explicitly naming him.

“Those who want to establish a parallel structure alongside the state, those who have infiltrated the state institutions ... we will come into your lairs and we will [destroy] these organizations within the state,” Erdoğan said Dec. 21.