Turkish deputy PM says FETÖ has become ‘modern masonic organization’

“We know that these people regard only those who are inside their community as believers. Those people have only put their community forward by removing the idea of Muslim unity. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in removing Muslims from the unity of the mosque for years. These people have emerged as a modern-day masonic organization. They have become pharaohs,” Kurtulmuş said at the opening ceremony of the Extraordinary Religious Council in Ankara on Aug. 3, almost three weeks after a deadly coup attempt blamed on the group.

The deputy prime minister also defined the organization as a “new religion.”

“In this respect, they are actually a new religion. They have entered a phase of religious supremacy ontologically to put up a new religion by integrating God’s latest religion with another religion and completely adding great delusions to this issue. Moreover, one of the most significant problems of this organization is the fact that they do not accept other Muslims separate from themselves and regard them as the ‘other.’ They did not regard those people as individuals of Islamic law within their circles, even if they had 99 Muslim signs, if they were not from them,” Kurtulmuş said.

He also said the biggest problem in FETÖ was self-defensive deception (taqiyah).

“Epistemologically, their biggest problem is that they converted taqiya into a part of their faith. Taqiya was one of the most significant aspects of those people at both the center of their faith and their organization,” Kurtulmuş added.

Taqiya has been long been a tool for some Muslim groups to conceal their true beliefs out of safety concerns.