Article Scan for Turkey – Dec 13th 2013

Erdogan getting hit in AKP-‘Cemaat’ war – by Kadri GURSEL

The almost two-year-long strife that has been raging between the Justice and Development (AKP) government and the Gulen Movement — a faith community identified as Cemaat in Turkey — which before had been a de facto partner of the political power, has dramatically escalated lately. It is on the verge of becoming a media war with an unpredictable outcome, with secret intelligence documents being made public one after another.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/turkey-akp-cemaat-gulen.html#ixzz2nMgljOUQ

Erdogan v Gulen.. Who will prevail?

The biggest achievement of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, during a decade of rule, has been to get the army out of politics. He did it with the help of the country’s most influential Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania but commands a global network of schools, charities and media outlets.

Now Mr Erdogan has turned on his former ally in a show of force that is likely to determine his own future as well as that of Turkish politics. Strange though it seems to many, Mr Gulen is perhaps the only force that can halt Mr Erdogan’s drift towards authoritarianism. He is also credited with keeping Turkish Islam moderate.

Read more http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21591645-who-will-prevail-erdogan-v-gulen

Turkey extends hand, but no apology, to Armenia by Fehmi TASTEKIN

Turkey’s plan to normalize ties with Armenia, the most critical part of its “zero problems with neighbors” policy, went to the dustbin after Ankara made a surprise U-turn for the sake of Azeri gas. Bilateral relations had been severed in 1994 over the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the Armenian occupation of 20% of Azeri territory.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/turkey-tentative-gesture-armenia.html#ixzz2nMhJQ8br

Post-Kemalist Turkey and the Gülen Movement – by Taha Özkan

Turkey is a country that is in the process of completing its normalization. In its most basic sense, this is a necessary process that both the society and the state have to go through. The problems the state, in a deep crisis of consolidation, was causing regarding religion, citizens’ language, various economic sectors and even its own institutions ironically constituted the groundwork for the emergence of both civil and illegal groups and their mobilization. The state opposed religion based on truisms of the primitive and positivist Western world, in fact, causing the mobilization of both “Islamists and non-Islamist” religious groups by constantly forcing them to fight for their existence. In other words, the existence of certain organizations that emerged from the problems created by Kemalism in a post-Kemalist Turkey naturally presents problems.

read more: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/post-kemalist-turkey-and-the-gulen-movement.aspx?pageID=449&nID=59471&NewsCatID=436