Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen said a crackdown on his followers by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was "ten times worse" than anything meted out after coups by the secularist military. Erdogan has accused Gulen's Hizmet ("Service") network, which has built quiet influence in the police and judiciary over decades, of orchestrating a graft investigation which has grown into one of the biggest challenges of his 11-year rule. He has responded by tightening government control of the courts and reassigning thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges, in what his aides say is a drive to cleanse the judiciary of Gulen's influence. In his first major interview in Turkish media since the graft scandal burst into the open in December, the U.S.-based cleric, whose worldwide network of followers say they number in the millions, said he was the victim of a campaign of slander. "In the wake of the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup, the authorities tracked me for six years as if I were a criminal. Raids were carried out. Our friends were harassed. In a sense, it became a sort of lifestyle for us to live under constant surveillance in a coup atmosphere," he said. "What we are seeing today is 10 times worse than what we saw during the military coups," he was quoted as saying in an interview with the Zaman newspaper and its English-language edition, both close to his movement. (www.todayszaman.com) Turkey's army, self-appointed guardians of secularism, toppled four governments in the second half of the 20th century before Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party brought a decade of economic and political stability. Rights groups accused the generals of torture and killings after coups in 1960 and 1980. Gulen's network helped cement the AK Party's rise, using its influence in the judiciary to help break the army's grip with a series of coup plot trials; but the marriage of convenience has fallen apart as the former allies turn on each other. "This time, we face similar treatment but at the hands of civilians who we think follow the same faith as us," Gulen said. "I should acknowledge that this inflicts extra pain on us. All we can do is say 'This, too, shall pass,' and remain patient." "PEAK OF ALL TROUBLES" The feud threatens to undermine Turkey's stability in the run-up to municipal elections on 30 March, the first test of Erdogan's popularity at the ballot box since nationwide protests last summer and since the graft scandal erupted. Opinion polls suggest Erdogan has retained his popularity despite the graft scandal and power struggle with Gulen, drawing on the country's strong economic growth under his rule. Erdogan will be looking to match or exceed the AKP vote of 39 percent in comparable municipal elections five years ago, helped in part by the continued weakness of political opponents. This month's polls are followed by a presidential race five months later in which Erdogan had long been expected to stand, although his party could also change its internal rules to let him serve a fourth term as prime minister, casting his strong leadership as needed to finish off the feud with Gulen. Erdogan has slammed those behind the graft scandal as "leeches", decrying what appears to have been the wiretapping over years of thousands of phones including his own by a "parallel state" bent on using blackmail to wield influence. "The parallel state situation, I can say, is a peak in terms of organising a plot, the peak of all troubles," he told Turkey's Kanal 7 TV in an interview late on Sunday, describing it as worse than an attempt in the courts in 2008 to close the AK Party on charges of seeking to introduce Islamic rule. "What really troubles us is this: legal or illegal how come the prime minister of a country is wiretapped. A court verdict to wiretap the prime minister is out of the question, you can't do this ... not for the president, not for the chief of staff. These (people) have become so low, so small," he said. In his latest headache as he campaigns around the country for the local elections, a Twitter account behind a string of leaks in the scandal posted on Thursday what it presented as prosecution files accusing four former government ministers of involvement in bribery and smuggling. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the documents. A summary of a report outlining details of an alleged bribery network involving the ministers is due to be read in an extraordinary session of parliament on Wednesday, after the opposition demanded the assembly be recalled from a recess. But Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Monday a parliamentary commission would need to be formed before the full documents could be viewed by commission members, a process only likely to get underway after the 30 March elections. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/96881.aspx
