AUG 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >>So, we know that the Gulen movement was big in Turkey but in Central Asia? Really? How deep is it and what does it do?

>> The movement, created by cleric Fethullah Gulen, is a social and religious group that has said it wants to integrate moderate Islam into the secular Turkish state and to replicate the model in other Muslim countries. The movement counts millions of followers. As it puts great emphasis on education and upward social mobility, the movement established a network of schools around the world, including in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

>>OK, but who is Gulen? Wasn’t he an ally of Erdogan?

>> Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan found in Gulen a strong ally when he came to power in 2003, a bulwark against a possible military backlash, something that had dogged Turkish leaders for half a century. Gulen and Erdogan, though, fell out in 2013, when a corruption scandal targeting members of Mr Erdogan’s ruling AKP party emerged. Mr Erdogan and others in his party alleged that the Gulenist members of the judiciary had orchestrated the scandal. Since then the government has cracked down on Gulenists in Turkey. Mr Gulen has lived in the United States since 1999 in a self-imposed exile. Now, after a failed coup in Turkey last month blamed on Gulen, Turkey has said it could ask the US government for the extradition of Gulen. Since the coup, Turkish police have detained over 60,000 state employees and dozens of journalists and businessmen allegedly linked to the Gulen movement.

>>Quiete a full-on assault. Will Turkey now force a crackdown on Gulen- linked institutions in Central Asia and South Caucasus?

>> In short, this bureau and the analysts we contacted all agree that Turkey will not go as far as to sever relations with countries that don’t respond to the request to shut down Gulen-linked schools. Apart from Azerbaijan, all other countries are loosely linked with Turkey. Plus, as shown in our story on page 3, these schools are a relative island of quality and reliability in the South Caucasus and Central Asia’s messy educational system. Both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have shrugged off Turkey’s requests to shut down Gulen- linked schools. Georgia appears also to have pretty much ignored Turkey’s request. Only Azerbaijan, Turkey’s super-tight ally, has gone along with Turkey’s request and closed down a TV station that had planned to run an interview with Gulen and brought under government control a university linked to the Gulen movement.

>>OK, but what about the businesses linked to Gulen?

>> The closest business link between Gulenists and the South Caucasus seems to have been uprooted immediately, with the sacking of Sadettin Korkut, chief of Petkim, a petrochemical complex in Izmir, owned by Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR (See the front page of the Business News). It appears that SOCAR was also keeping a list of Gulen-linked people among its ranks. Together with Korkut, who was later arrested, around 200 other employees of SOCAR-linked companies were sacked. This, however, appears to be a one-off act of loyalty from Azerbaijan’s government to Ankara.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)