MHP: AKP and Gülen movement co-operated

“If the Gülen movement is a terrorist organization, then would the government not have aided and abetted them for 10 years? How will they account for it? [President] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan needs to explain the 10 years,” Bahçeli said on May 14. 

The MGK should explain how it cleared the AKP from the once-close relationship between the party and the Gülen movement, if it deems the Gülen movement as a threat to national security, he added.

“The MGK acknowledged the ‘parallel’ threat. What is meant by the word ‘parallel’ should be explained then,” he said. 

The MGK released a statement on April 29 after its latest meeting. The statement did not clearly spell out whether the Gülen movement was the “parallel state” and included in the amended version of the national security document, known as the “Red Book.” 

In a previous MGK meeting, however, held on Oct. 30, 2014, the MGK publicly documented the Gülen movement as one of the leading threats against the country’s national security.

The fight between erstwhile allies Erdoğan and Gülen began late last year after a massive corruption and graft investigation against four ministers led by Istanbul prosecutors went public in December 2013. The AKP government has said the operation was a plot carried out by prosecutors and police officers loyal to Gülen, a 73-year-old Islamic scholar who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States, aiming to topple Erdoğan and his government. 

The Gülenists, who have been accused of forming a “parallel structure” within the state, have also been charged with illegally eavesdropping on hundreds of thousands of people through operations by members employed in the judiciary and the police.

Since the probe broke, thousands of prosecutors and police officers have been removed from their previous positions, with pro-government prosecutors now probing the activities of the “parallel state.”