“Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present.”

William L. Shirer

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Numbed in their abjectitude,

The only moving thing

The eye of the young boy

Who would never be an artist.

I

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down…This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weakness, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty unless the opposing side learns to combat poison gas with poison gas.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 43-44.

II

No one can accuse him [Hitler] of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 81.

III

No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolph Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. At the crest of their popular strength, in July 1932, the National Socialists had attained but 37% of the popular vote. But the 63 per cent of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, however temporarily, to stamp it out.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 185.

IV

In the four years since the 1928 elections, the Nazis had won some thirteen million new votes. Yet the majority that would sweep the party into power still eluded Hitler. He had won only 37% of the total vote. The majority of the Germans were still against him.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 166.

V

Between the Left and the Right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in other countries—in France, in England, in the United States—had proved to be the backbone of democracy.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 186.

VI

It [the Republic] had, as we have seen, allowed the Army to maintain a state within a state, the businessmen and bankers to make large profits, the Junkers to keep their uneconomic estates by means of government loans that were never repaid and seldom used to improve the land. Yet this generosity had won neither gratitude nor their loyalty to the Republic. With a narrowness, a prejudice, a blindness which in retrospect seem inconceivable to this chronicler, they hammered away at the foundations of the Republic until, in alliance with Hitler, they brought it down.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 186.

VII

When Hitler addressed the Reichstag on January 30, 1934, he could look back on a year of achievement without parallel in German history. Within twelve months he had overthrown the Weimar Republic, substituted his personal dictatorship for its democracy, destroyed all the political parties but his own, smashed the state governments and their parliaments and unified and defederalized the Reich, wiped out the labor unions, stamped out democratic associations of any kind, driven the Jews out of public and professional life, abolished freedom of speech and of the press, stifled the independence of the courts and “coordinated” under Nazi rule the political, economic, cultural and social life of an ancient and cultivated people. For all these accomplishments and for his resolute action in foreign affairs, which took Germany out of the concert of nations at Geneva, and proclaimed German insistence on being treated as an equal among the great powers, he was backed, as the autumn plebiscite and election had shown, by the overwhelming majority of the German people.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 213.

VIII

Systematic lying to the whole world can be safely carried out only under the conditions of totalitarian rule, where the fictitious quality of everyday reality makes propaganda largely superfluous.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 245.

Hitler lost no time in exploiting the Reichstag fire to the limit. On the day following the fire, February 28 [1933], he prevailed on President Hindenburg to sign a decree “for the protection of the People and the State” suspending seven sections of the constitution which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. Described as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree laid down that: Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 194.

IX

The inclusion of criminals is necessary in order to make plausible the propagandistic claim of the movement that the institution [concentration camps] exists for asocial elements.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 448.

The purpose of the concentration camps was not only to punish enemies of the regime but by their very existence to terrorize the people and deter them from even contemplating any resistance to Nazi rule.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 271.

From the very first weeks of 1933, when the massive and arbitrary arrests, beating and murders by those in power began, Germany under National Socialism ceased to be a society based on law. “Hitler is the law!” the legal lights of Nazi Germany proudly proclaimed, and Goering emphasized it when he told the Prussian prosecutors on July 12, 1934, that “the law and the will of the Fuehrer are one.” It was true.

Ibid., 268.

X

Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a great power in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood.

Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:

First, into those who believe everything they read;

Second, into those who have ceased to believe anything;

Third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.

Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of profession, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have been neither born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 240-241.

XI

General Augusto Pinochet raped, tortured, murdered, robbed, and lied.

He violated the constitution he had pledged to respect. He was the strongman of a dictatorship that tortured and murdered thousands of Chileans. He sent tanks into the streets to discourage the curiosity of those who wanted to investigate his crimes. And he lied every time he opened his mouth to talk about these things.

Once the dictatorship was over, Pinochet stayed on as head of the army. And in 1998, when he was to retire, he stepped onto the country’s civilian stage. As I write these lines, he has, by his own order, become a senator for life. Protest has erupted in the streets, but the buoyant general, deaf to anything but the military hymn praising his achievements, proceeds to take his seat in the Senate. He has plenty of reason to turn a deaf ear: after all, the day of the 1973 coup d’état that ended Chile’s democracy, September 11, was celebrated as a national holiday for a quarter of a century, and September 11 is still the name of one of downtown Santiago’s main thoroughfares.

Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down, 193.

XII

Works of art that cannot be understood but need a swollen set of instructions to prove their right to exist and find their way to neurotics who are receptive to such stupid or insolent nonsense will no longer openly reach the German nation. Let no one have illusions! National Socialism has set out to purge the German Reich and our people of all those influences threatening its existence and character…With the opening of this exhibition has come the end of artistic lunacy and with it the artistic pollution of our people.

Adolph Ziegler, President, Reich Chamber of Art, 18 July 1937

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 244.

At one period in the mid-thirties the hissing of German films became so common that Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior, issued a stern warning against “treasonable behavior on the part of the cinema audiences.” Likewise the radio programs were so roundly criticized that the president of the Radio Chamber, one Horst Dressler-Andress declared that such carping was “an insult to German culture” and would not be tolerated.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 247.

XIII

Do not interrupt. I will not tolerate interruption. I am an old man. My voice tires. Gentlemen, I appeal to your sense of justice, your notorious sense of justice. Hear me out. Consider my third point. Which is that you have exaggerated. Grossly. Hysterically. That you have made me some kind of mad devil, the quintessence of evil, hell embodied. When I was, in truth, only a man of my time. Oh inspired, I will grant you, with a certain—how shall I put it?—nose for the supreme political possibility. A master of human moods, perhaps, but a man of my time.

Average, if you will. Had it been otherwise, had I been the singular demon of your rhetorical fantasies, how then could millions of ordinary men and women have found in me the mirror, the plain mirror of their needs and appetites? And it was, I will allow you that, an ugly time. But I did not create its ugliness, and I was not the worst. Far from it. How many wretched little men of the forest did your Belgian friends murder outright or leave to starvation and syphilis when they raped the Congo? Answer me that, gentlemen. Or must I remind you? Some twenty million. That picnic was under way when I was newborn. What was Rotterdam or Coventry compared with Dresden and Hiroshima? I do not come out worst in that black game of numbers. Did I invent the camps? Ask of the Boers. But let us be serious. Who was it that broke the Reich? To whom did you hand over millions, tens of millions of men and women from Prague to the Baltic? Set them like a bowl of milk before an insatiable cat? I was a man of murderous time, but a small man compared with him. You think of me as a satanic liar. Very well. Do not take my word for it. Choose what sainted , unimpeachable witness you will. The holy writer, the great bearded one who came out of Russia and preached to the world. It is sometime ago. My memory aches. The man of the Archipelago. Yes, that word sticks in the mind. What did he say? That Stalin had slaughtered thirty million. That he had perfected genocide when I was still a nameless scribbler in Munich. My boys used their fists and whips. I won’t deny it. The time stank of hunger and blood. But when a man spat out the truth they would stop their fun. Stalin’s torturers worked for the pleasure of the thing. To make men befoul themselves, to obtain confessions which are lies, insanities, obscene jokes. The truth only made them more bestial. It is not I who assert these things: it is your own survivors, your historians, the sage of the Gulag. Who, then, was the greater destroyer, whose blood lust was the more implacable? Stalin’s or mine? […] Our terrors were a village carnival compared with his. Our camps covered absurd acres; he had strung wire and death pits around a continent. Who survived among those who had fought with him, brought him to power, executed his will? Not one. He smashed their bones to the last splinter. When my fall came, my good companions were alive, fat, scuttling for safety or recompense, cavorting toward you with their contritions and their memoirs. How many Jews did Stalin kill—your savior, your ally Stalin? Answer me that. Had he not died when he did, there would not have been one of you left alive between Berlin and Vladivostok. Yet Stalin died in bed, and the world stood hushed beside the tiger’s rest.

George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H., 167-169.

Sources:

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: A Harvest Book, 1985.

Galeano, Eduardo. Upside Down. New York: Picador, 1998.

Hitler, Adolph. Mein Kampf. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Steiner, George. The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,  1981.

http://www.brighteningglance.org/on-turkey.html

28 MARCH 2011

http://www.kanalb.com.tr/arsivliste.php?Program=85&L=KanalBProgramlar%2Fbilmek%2B28032011bilmekgerek

http://www.brighteningglance.org/ryan-interview-kanal-b-bilmek-gerek-28-march-2011.html

The prime minister of Turkey has made a policy, indeed a habit, indeed a rather nasty, sneaky habit, of listening to the private conversations of Turkish citizens. Accordingly, he has destroyed many reputations and killed many careers, all on the basis of circumstantial and ill-gotten evidence. He has done this under the guise of protecting the nation from terrorism. To that end, hundreds of those opposed to his regime have been jailed. Many have become seriously ill from their confinement, some have died. And many more live in fear wondering about just who is the terrorist.

Now it is the prime minister’s turn. Wikileaks has lent more smoke to the fire of what has been well and widely known about the Turkish prime minister. Few aside from his most ardent supporters would quibble with the documentary descriptions of him as willful, arrogant, and harsh. And the dimensions of his newly gained wealth, and that of his loyal followers, and their children is of no surprise to anyone marginally alert and living in today’s Turkey. 

One trademark of loud-mouthed bullies is that when they are confronted, physically or otherwise, they shut up. Tonight, in the face of a tidal wave of information indicating how corrupt and morally bankrupt he and his minions may be, the prime minister shut up. But his eager nation awaits and deserves a well-considered response. Perhaps when he returns from Libya after receiving the Distinguished Statesman Award from that distinguished statesman and humanitarian Moammar Gadhafi, a fellow leakee? Perhaps then the Turkish prime minister will bless the Turkish nation with his usual eloquence? Like that master of revenge, the Count of Monte Cristo, who summed up all human knowledge in three words, we “wait and hope.”  

Cem Ryan
Istanbul
29 November 2010

http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

It’s now all the chi-chi fashion rage! The prurient fashion designing male politicians of both sides are again trying to determine what Turkish women should wear on their heads. And where, and when, too. The secular left offers the Iranian model with a dash of hair showing. The so-called pious, ruling party, convicted by the Turkish constitutional court of being the center of the anti-secular movement in the nation, argues in the craven words of democracy and freedom. Whether

Üsküdar, Istanbul, November 2003

it’s abaya, chador, burqa, nigab, turban, hijab, it’s all part of a women’s democratic fashion choice. And the prime minister himself has proclaimed the covering of women as a “political symbol.” In fact, it’s a symbol of stupidity and backwardness. It’s a political dialogue, at the expense of the dignity of Turkish women, intended to put them and keep them in a “living” kefen (burial shroud). It is a lifelong headlock—social, political, intellectual, physiological, and psychological—a death grip until they meet their literal end in the grave. 

“Be sure of it!” challenged the jealous Othello, for he must be certain of his wife’s infidelity. “Give me the ocular proof,” he demanded of the treacherous Iago, taking him by the throat. And in this manner Desdemona would be condemned by her own version of a headscarf, her handkerchief, the ocular proof of her infidelity. Except it was false, planted evidence. But she was a woman so she died anyway. 

The headscarf issue that so besets and divides Turkey is also “ocular proof.” But of what? National piety, that’s what. It had allowed America to call Turkey a “moderate Islamic nation.” It satisfied the American need for symbolic gestures, like the upright purple fingers of Iraqi voters signified democratic progress. For without such signs how could America, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and their fellow Americans be sure of Turkey’s democratic moderate Islamic piety? And if you’re wondering how a backward-thinking political party like the AKP came to be the ruling party of the country of Atatürk, it’s because of AKP’s complete collaboration with America’s disastrous Middle East policy. And sadly, while President Obama earlier indicated differently, he too de facto continues the nonsensical Bush administration’s policy of Turkish moderate Islam. And the ruling party, the AKP, loves all of it, particularly the headscarf part. The prime minister also encourages women to open themselves to the idea of having at least three children. Ah such loving political concern by the prime minister for the most delicate areas of femininity. 

It should come as no surprise to even a casual reader of the Koran that the Turkish headscarf issue has nothing to do with Islam. It is a tradition that was made-in-America, not Mecca, and certainly not in Turkey. The genuine tradition of wearing a headscarf arose from women field workers in rural areas for protection from extreme weather conditions. In other words, the headscarf came about from a physical necessity that had nothing to do with religion. This has been appropriated, more correctly, stolen, by religious-mongering politicians and converted into a bogus religious duty. In fact, it is an imperative that arises from imperialism and enslavement. 

The historian Eric Hobsbawn explains this phenomenon in his book, The Invention of Tradition. (1) One example is especially relevant to today’s Turkey. Do you think that the Scottish kilt and its fabric-coded clans were part of some long cultural tradition in Scotland? Wrong! It was invented by the ruling power, England, to divide tribes into definable groups, thus to better control them. In like manner was the political turban invented by America for Turkish consumption by gullible women at the hands of scheming male politicians. Turkish women, wise up! It’s always the same old story with you! Don’t allow yourselves to be led by ignoramuses, no matter what political party they pretend to represent! 

Consider this. Without the headscarf Turkish women look, for the most part, much the same as any western women. Don’t bother what’s in the head of Turkish women. For Turkish politicians, it’s what’s on it that counts. In their eyes, women are merely objects, with particular prurient focus on their hair. The admonition for women to cover their heads is made by men not by the Koran. 

The American woman presented as some sort of authority by the Turkish Daily News article entitled “American seeking a democratic Turkey” (Feb. 2, 2008) said that, for her, the headscarf symbolizes that “I am a Muslim woman.” Covering is “mandatory” and an “obligation,” she said. This is nonsense. She was either misreading or not reading the Koran. Indeed, she was manufacturing her own tradition. One may wear whatever they want on their heads, whether a baseball cap or a lampshade. And one may justify doing so or not. But the justification for Turkish women to wear headscarves resides not in the Koran, but in their blind, thoughtless subservience to political men. One may make up one’s own rules about anything but there is no such rule in the Koran. “There must be some wisdom to it,” she insisted, demonstrating blind faith and little else. How sad a limitation for this woman who professes to be a “seeker.” 

The Koran, a precisely worded text, contains no language requiring women to cover their heads. None whatsoever! It renders specific procedures about many things. For washing: “hands as far as the elbow… feet to the ankles.” In the desert? No water? Use “clean sand” (5.5). For apostates who preach against God: “have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides” (5:31). Regarding food: don’t eat “strangled animals” (5.3) and “kill no game while on pilgrimage” (5:95). Of course, it does admonish all people as “children of Adam” to cover their shameful parts, but this is mythological derivative material from the Bible and the fall of man (7:25). And for all its enormous specificity, it never mentions women’s hair. There is much information in this fact. 

In reality, the Koran is protective of women. Women should “draw their veils close round them” so they will not be molested (33:57)—by men of course, the same kind of men who now seek to enslave Turkish women. They should “cover their bosoms,” not display “their adornments except such as normally revealed” and not “stamp their feet when walking” (24:30). But there is nothing therein about wearing a headscarf in order to be a “Muslim woman.” This is a manmade myth, a sham, that is also dangerously stigmatizing of those women who don’t cover. Are they any less Islamic? And why should women bear the full signifying burden anyway? The answer is simple. First, because of the Turkish government’s complicity with America’s political project in the Middle East. Second, because men, particularly pious political men, said so in order to keep women in a subservient role. What a bad, sick joke on women! What a bad, sick joke that women play on themselves! 

Of course, women can wear anything they choose. But they should know why they do so. And if they choose to wear a headscarf, they do so, not for Allah or Jahweh or Jesus or Mary or Mohammed, and certainly not for the Koran. They do so for politicians. And that’s just stupid. They should take great care not to end up like Desdemona, torn apart by the jealous, deceitful hands of their own personal and political Othellos. 

Cem Ryan, Istanbul 

(1) Hobsbawm, Eric. The Invention of Tradition.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. (2) Turkish Daily News. American seeking a democratic Turkey. 2 February 2008. 

http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
John Milton
Paradise Lost

When Emile Zola published his historic letter, J’Accuse, addressed to the President of France, in L’Aurore newspaper on 13 January 1898, he was rich and famous. But that did not stop his mighty anger. Outraged by the travesty of justice that resulted in the false arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal Jewish army officer, he appealed to the president and the nation for reason and justice to prevail.

Dreyfus was convicted by falsified evidence and forged documents, and was a scapegoat for the thoroughly corrupt French Army general staff. He had been imprisoned at a hell hole called Devil’s Island for three years when Zola wrote his letter. (1)

Zola did so for two reasons. First, to draw the public’s attention to the shameful miscarriage of justice. Second, to provoke his own arrest for libel so that new evidence could be introduced that would prove Dreyfus innocent. He succeeded on both counts. Dreyfus was cleared in 1899 and fully exonerated and reinstated in the French Army in 1906. Zola died under suspicious circumstances on 29 September 1902, “a moment in the history of human conscience,” as eulogized by Anatole France. (2)

On 29 September 2010, 108 years to the day after Zola’s death, the ongoing disaster called Turkey received yet another Pinochet-style shock in its struggle to retain its secularity. Hanefi Avcı, the head of the police department in the city of Eskişehir, was arrested for writing a best seller. His book laid bare the widely suspected fact that Turkey’s highest government institution’s—police, army, and judicial system—had been infiltrated and indeed subverted by a religious cemaat, the Fethullah Gülen movement. (3) Since Avcı himself was once an eager activist for Gülen’s cemaat, the book has a certain whiff of authenticity.

And yesterday, Avcı was arrested. The reason? The usual nonsense of the Ergenekon prosecutor. It seems that suddenly the previously highly esteemed police chief has connections with a terrorist organization. Was the terror organization the Gülen movement?  Ha, ha, ha, no not quite. The Gülenista government of Turkey, also known as the AKP, paid no attention to the compelling information in Avcı’s book about their sugar daddy, Gülen. It decided on some other “terror group,” some socialist or maybe, horror of horrors, some communist operation. Another Alice-in-Wonderland group, cobbled together with false documents and bogus telephone conversations, using the latest listening and stealth technology provided by…guess who?

Avcı refused to file a petition suggested by his lawyer to demand release from prison pending presentation of formal charges. Like Zola, he wants to experience the whole disgusting mess called Turkish justice. He also refuses to speak to any judicial or prosecutorial officials that he suspects of being members of the Gülen cemaat. But Avcı says that he will talk, at his trial. Like Emile Zola, may he sing long and loud.

Hanefi Avcı, KORKMA!

Cem Ryan
Istanbul
http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

NOTES:
1. An excellent summary of the Zola/Dreyfus affair by University of Georgia law professor Donald Wilkes can be found at:  http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/his9_jaccuse.html
For those interested in a dramatic representation of this incident see the stunning classic film (1937) The Life of Emile Zola: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Emile-Zola-Special/dp/B0006HBV3W/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1285843535&sr=1-1

2.  “Il fut un moment de la conscience humaine.” Anatole France, 5 October 1902.
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/dreyfus/dreyfus-zola-anatole-france.asp

3. Gülen lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. It is well and widely known that his activities are aided, abetted, and otherwise supported by the United States government, in particular by the CIA. The latter’s officials were signatories to Gülen’s permanent residency application (“green card”), which he was granted in 2008. For more detailed information see ISLAM, SECULARISM, AND THE BATTLE FOR TURKEY’S FUTURE at: http://www.brighteningglance.org/on-turkey.html

The charges are vague. The proof is a hodge-podge of illegal wiretaps, secret witnesses (think Spanish Inquisition), prosecutorial leaks to pro-government newspapers, planted and otherwise tainted evidence illegally obtained. Concern about the provenance of such evidence is ignored by the court. The dossiers against the accused—journalists, labor leaders, lawyers, writers, retired military officers, all defenders of the republic established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—number in the hundreds, the pages therein in the hundreds of thousands. Think Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. The defendants on trial still do not know the specific charges against them. Some have been incarcerated for more than two years. There is no notion of habeas corpus. The case reads as if assembled by an infinite number of monkeys banging away on computers while juggling scissors and paste pots. The chief prosecutor, allegedly a lawyer, has the appropriate last name of Öz.

When I attended the session on 13 August the chief prosecutor was somewhere on the yellow brick road and thus absent, as were all his assistants. So the three judges interrogated the accused. This in itself is incredible. These are the same judges that are supposed to render a verdict of guilt or innocence. How can they be impartial if they are also helping the prosecutor make the case? How can they remain open-minded and just if they are emotionally involved in the prosecution? This is wildly prejudicial and trashes any notion regarding the presumption of innocence. More importantly, by directly interrogating the defendants, the judges have already accepted the validity of the evidence. Defense counsels were challenging the legality of the evidence but to no avail. The judges had already de facto accepted it. To whom should evidentiary appeals be made? Zeus? Telephone numbers and snippets of alleged conversation were read into the record. Do you know this man? No? Do you remember this telephone number? No. Amazingly, a listing of the prescription medications taken by an army general not even charged appeared in the dossier. What a fiasco! No corroborating evidence or witnesses were called. The session was just one long boring rendition of irrelevancies, immaterialities, and hearsay. On droned the three judges, See-No-Legal, Hear-No-Legal, Speak-No-Legal. An embarrassing travesty. Think Emile Zola’s J’Accuse.

In Chile, Pinochet executed all opposed to his regime in the football stadium in Santiago. In Turkey, a slower political genocide is unfolding, this one in a prison exercise hall. The victims? The heirs of the Turkish secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Turkish army, the supposed defender of Atatürk’s masterpiece has been neutered. It quietly licks its wounds and feathers its nest in incompetent solitude.

Yes, a political genocide of epic dimension is raging throughout the land. It reeks of injustice. But who cares? It is aided and abetted by the west. But who cares? We know where the traitors are. But where are the patriots? It’s the most disgusting of monkey business. Anyone care for a banana?

Cem Ryan
Istanbul

http://cemryan.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/monkeys-in-wonderland/

[Letterhead Redacted]

20 July 2010

The Honorable Barack H. Obama 
President of the United States
The White House 
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW 
Washington, DC 20500 
USA

Dear Mr. President:

Truth is still on the march in Turkey; the lies and treachery of the present government are in plain sight. But justice is dead. You westerners have killed it by your support of the AKP regime of  Recep Tayyip Erdoĝan. Mr. President, you recently referred to so-called democracy in Turkey as a “Muslim Democracy.” Religion and democracy don’t go together, Mr. President. And you, above all people, should know it. You spoke so glowingly about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in May 2009. When you speak of Atatürk and democracy in the same breath, as you did, you must always emphasize three words—SECULAR, SECULAR, SECULAR.   

This is my fourth letter to you since your inauguration, one every six months. I have yet to receive the courtesy of the slightest acknowledgement of their receipt by the White House. I know if the letters had contained threats to you, your secret service agents would have knocked my door down in the middle of the night. I also know that when I sent you campaign contributions in 2008 I received not only e-mail thank-yous, but an international telephone call from your headquarters to verify that I was a valid international contributor. Is this what defines your administration’s standards of courtesy and openness, Mr. President, money? I hope not, but I think so. But perhaps you have read my letters but acknowledging them brings you embarassment because you have so thoroughly embraced the AKP regime. So be it, Mr. President. But what about common courtesy?

So-called “democracy” remains in critical condition in Turkey. Forget Erdoĝan’s pathetic antics about Gaza. Forget about his cozy relations with Iran, Sudan and other gangster “Islamic” regimes. They are of utmost embarrassment to the Turkish people but mean nothing compared to the civilian coup that he has engineered. Like Hitler in the thirties, all was done under the veil of “democracy.” And under that same veil, the jails are bursting with leftists opposed to the brutality of the Erdoĝan regime. Where Hitler used the SA brownshirts to do his dirty work, Erdoĝan hides behind the veils and headscarves of his AKP women. Turkey’s highest court ruled that Erdoĝan and his party are the center of anti-secular activities against the Turkish nation. In America that would be called treason. Like Hitler, Erdoĝan has destroyed the legal system by packing the courts with his own judges and prosecutors.

You should be particularly worried to know that the Turkish army has been completely compromised by a hoax called Ergenekon. Not only does Erdoĝan now have the police force and the gendarmes, he has the army too. And you are now well aware of the trigger-happy, loud-mouthed incompetence of the Turkish prime minister in the foreign affairs arena. Turkey is on the march, BACKWARDS, to the gloriously incompetent days of the Ottomans. This is what your gloriously incompetent CIA along with numerous gloriously treasonous Turks have accomplished. Erdoĝan and his ilk champion this as some Islamic rennaissance. This is utter nonsense.

If you read the books I sent to you with my first letter you know this. The only “enlightenment period” was due entirely to one man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Described and defamed as just “another ruthless general” in a recent article in the lamentable Economist, Atatürk used the energy generated by the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) to lift Turkey from the Middle Ages mentality of the Ottomans to modern times, and in many ways beyond. For example, he gave women the right to vote in 1930 and to stand for election in 1934, decades before many European countries (France, Italy, Greece, Switzerland). It is this grand achievement, by history’s most remarkable soldier-statesmen-educator, that has been destroyed by Erdoĝan and his fellow Islamo-fascist thugs. And these same thugs, who publicly proclaim women’s inferiority to men, bring their bizarrely dressed wives to receive warm welcomes in the White House.

Oh the horror wrought by American support! A heart of darkness envelopes Turkey, Mr. President: extrajudicial wiretapping and surveilance, unconstitutional imprisonments, the trashing of human rights protections, wanton abuse of press freedom protections, corruption and theft by the ruling AKP of epic proportion, and the destruction of the Turkish army. No wonder the Economist magazine feels free to debase Atatürk. Good job, all you westerners. Bad job, Mr. President.

But there is a force rising, Mr. President. And there are many, many Turks who refuse to take the garbage dealt to them by the AKP over the past seven years. And the force is energized by the words of Kemal Atatürk. You may not know or remember them Mr. President, but you should mark them well. As I told you in my earlier letters, I remind you again. The day of reckoning is coming. The day is near. Read his words, they describe Turkey today:

You, the Turkish youth! Your primary duty is to forever protect and defend Turkish independence and the Turkish Republic. This is the mainstay of your existence and of your future.

 This foundation is your most precious treasure in the future, as well, there may be malevolence, within and abroad, which will seek to deny your birthright. If one day you are compelled to defend your independence and the republic, you shall not reflect on the conditions and possibilities of the situation in which you find yourself, in order to accomplish your mission. These conditions and possibilities may appear unfavorable. The adversaries who scheme against your independence and your Republic may be the representatives of a victory without precedent in the world. By force or by ruse, all citadels and all arsenals of our dear fatherland may have been taken; all of its armies may have been dispersed and all corners of the country may have been physically occupied. More distressing and more grievous than all these, those who hold and exercise the power within the country may have fallen into gross error, blunder, and even treason. These holders of power may have even united their personal interests with political ambitions of the invaders. The nation itself may have fallen into privation, and may have become exhausted and desolate.

 You, the future sons and daughters of Turkey! Even under such circumstances and conditions, your duty is to redeem Turkish independence and the Republic! The strength you shall need exists in the noble blood flowing through your veins.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
From The Great Speech
20 October 1927

Mr. President, in the above speech, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gave his heirs, the Turkish people, the right, indeed the duty, to defend the principles of Atatürkian democracy. Not Moderate Islamic democracy! Not Muslim democracy! Just democracy, Mr. President, the same kind of democracy as yours.

Yes, there is a force rising, Mr. President. There is a new Kemal rising, Mr. President. You should know this, Mr. President. And you should know him. On election day he will throw the treasonous AKP into the Mediterranean as the older Kemal did to the western occupiers. You and America would be wise to abandon your support for the current Islamo-fascist government and, for once, leave Turkey alone. Or you better know how to swim in deep, turbulent waters.

With my deep respect,

James C. Ryan, Ph.D.
Istanbul, Turkey

PS  My previous three letters and a brief bio are attached.

CEM RYAN
http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

[Turkish Translation Follows]

TÜRKÇE ÇEVİRİSİ

20 Temmuz 2010
Saygıdeğer Barack H. Obama
Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Başkanı
Beyaz Saray
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
ABD

Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı:

Gerçek hala marş halindedir Türkiye’de; şimdiki hükümetin yalan ve ihanetleri açıkça görülmektedir. Fakat adalet öldü. Siz batılılar öldürdünüz onu, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’ın AKP rejimini destekleyerek. Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı, geçenlerde Türkiye’deki sözde demokrasiyi “Müslüman Demokrasi” diye adlandırdınız. Din ve demokrasi beraber olmaz sayın Cumhurbaşkanı. Ve siz, herkesten önce, bunu bilmelisiniz. Mayıs 2009’da Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi’nde Mustafa Kemal Atatürk hakkında övgüyle konuştunuz. Yaptığınız gibi, Atatürk ve demokrasiden aynı anda bahsederken, her zaman üç sözcüğü vurgulamanız gerekir: LAİKLİK, LAİKLİK,LAİKLİK

Cumhurbaşkanlığı görevinize başladığınızdan bu yana, her altı ayda bir olmak üzere, bu size yazdığım dördüncü mektubum. Beyaz Saray’dan mektuplarımın alındıklarına dair, nezaketen de olsa, henüz en ufak bir bilgi almış değilim. Biliyorum, eğer mektuplar size yönelik tehdit içerselerdi, sizin gizli ajanlarınız gece yarısı kapımı çalarlardı. Ve gene biliyorum ki, 2008’de size seçim kampanyası için bağış gönderdiğimde, sadece elektronik postayla teşekkürler değil, aynı zamanda sizin merkezlerden uluslararası geçerli bir destekleyici olduğumu kanıtlamak amacıyla uluslar arası telefonlar aldım. Sizin yönetiminizin nezaket ve açıklık standartlarını tanımlayan bu mudur, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı? Umarım değil, ama ben öyle düşünüyorum. Belki de mektuplarımı okudunuz ama onları aldığınızı kabul etmek size mahcubiyet verecektir çünkü AKP rejimini öyle sıkıca kucaklamışsınız ki! Öyle olsun, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı! Fakat sıradan nezakete ne oldu?

Sözde “demokrasi” Türkiye’de kritik bir durumdadır. Bırakın Erdoğan’ın Gazze hakkındaki hazin davranışlarını. Bırakın İran, Sudan ve diğer gangster ister “İslamî” rejimlerle samimi ilişkilerini. Bunlar Türkler için son derece utanç verici fakat yapılmakta olan sivil darbeyle mukayese edildiğinde bunların hiç bir anlamı yok. Otuzlardaki Hitler gibi, yapılan her şey “demokrasi” kılıfı altındadır. Ve aynı kılıf altında hapishaneler Erdoğan’ın gaddar rejimine muhalefet eden solcularla dolup taşmaktadır. Hitler kirli işlerini yaptırmak için kahverengi gömlekli SA’larını kullanırken, Erdoğan da kendi AKP’li kadınlarının örtü ve türbanlarının arkasına saklanmaktadır.Türkiye’nin en yüksek [Anayasa] mahkemesi Erdoğan ve partisinin Türk milletine karşı laiklik karşıtı eylemlerin odağı olduğuna hükmetti. Buna Amerika’da vatan hainliği denir. Hitler gibi, Erdoğan da kendi hakim ve savcılarını mahkemelere doldurarak hukuk sistemini çökertti.

Özellikle bilmeniz gerekir ki Türk ordusu Ergenekon denilen bir komplo ile ciddi olarak zayıflatılmıştır. Şimdi Erdoğan sadece polis gücü ve jandarmaya değil, orduya da hakim olmuştur. Ve şimdi Türk başbakanının dışişlerinde her yere şiddetle saldırmak için eli tetikte olan ve ağzı kalabalık beceriksizliğinin de iyice farkındasınızdır. Türkiye marş halindedir, GERİYE DOĞRU, Osmanlı’nın şanlı-şöhretli yetersiz günlerine doğru. Bu sizin şanlı-şöhretli yetersiz CIA’nızın sayısız şanlı-şöhretli hain Türklerle birlikte başardıklarıdır.Erdoğan ve taifesi bunu İslamî Rönesans olarak savunuyorlar. Bu tamamiyle saçmalıktır.

Eğer size ilk mektubumla birlikte gönderdiğim kitapları okuduysanız bunu bilirsiniz. Tek “aydınlanma dönemi” tamamiyle bir Tek Adam, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’ten sayesindedir. Acınası Ekonomist dergisindeki yeni bir makalede “bir diger insafsız general” diye tanımlanmış ve karalanmış olan Atatürk, Türk Ulusal Bağımsızlık Savaşı’ndan (1919-1923) ortaya çıkmış olan enerjiyi Türkiye’yi Osmanlı’nın Ortaçağ zihniyetinden modern çağlara ve birçok bakımdan daha da ötesine taşımak için kullanmıştır. Mesela, 1930’da kadınlara seçme hakkını ve 1934’te de seçilme hakkını vermiştir, birçok Avrupa ülkesinden (Fransa, İtalya, Yunanistan, İsviçre) on yıllarca önce. İşte, tarihin en olağanüstü asker-devlet adamı-eğitimcisi tarafından gerçekleştirilmiş bu muhteşem  başarı, Erdoğan ve onun İslamo-faşist çete arkadaşları tarafından ortadan kaldırılmaktadır. Ve kadının erkekten aşağıda olduğunu açıkça ilan eden bu aynı çete, garip şekilde giyinmiş eşlerini nezaket ve içtenlikle karşılanmak üzere Beyaz Saray’a getirirler.

Ah, Amerikan desteğiyle gelen dehşet! Karanlığın yüreği Türkiye’yi sarıyor, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı: mahkeme kararı olmadan yapılan dinlemeler ve takipler, anayasaya aykırı tutuklamalar, insan haklarının tahribi, basın özgürlüğünün ahlaksızca ihlali, iktidardaki AKP’nin büyük miktarlardaki yolsuzluk ve  hırsızlıkları, ve Türk ordusunun yıpratılması. Ekonomist dergisinin Atatürk’ü aşağılamak hakkını kendinde görmesi sürpriz değil. Aferin, siz tüm batılılara. Kötü iş, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı.

Fakat yükselen bir güç var Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı. Geçen yedi yılda AKP’nin onlara vermeye çalıştığı çöpü almayı reddedecek daha çok, bir çok Türk var. Ve bu güç Kemal Atatürk’ün sözlerinden  enerji alıyor. Onları bilmiyor ya da hatırlamıyor olabilirsiniz, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı, fakat onlara iyice dikkat etmelisiniz. Daha önceki mektuplarımda  size söylemiş olduğum gibi, size tekrar hatırlatıyorum. Hesap günü geliyor. Gün yakındır. Atatürk’ün sözlerini okuyun, bugünkü Türkiye’yi tanımlıyorlar:

Ey Türk Gençliği!

Birinci vazifen, Türk istikllini, Türk Cumhuriyetini, ilelebet, muhafaza ve müdafaa etmektir. Mevcudiyetinin ve istikbalinin yegane temeli budur.

 Bu temel, senin, en kıymetli hazinendir. İstikbalde dahi, seni, bu hazineden mahrum etmek isteyecek, dahili ve harici, bedhahların olacaktır. Bir gün, istiklal ve Cumhuriyeti müdafaa mecburiyetine düşersen, vazifeye atılmak için, içinde bulunacağın vaziyetin imkan ve şeraitini düşünmeyeceksin! Bu imkan ve şerait, çok namüsait bir mahiyette tezahür edebilir. İstiklal ve Cumhuriyetine kastedecek düşmanlar, bütün dünyada emsali görülmemiş bir galibiyetin mümessili olabilirler. Cebren ve hile ile aziz vatanın kaleleri zaptedilmiş, bütün tersanelerine girilmiş, bütün orduları dağıtılmış ve memleketin her köşesi bilfiil işgal edilmiş olabilir. Bütün bu şeraitten daha elim ve daha vahim olmak üzere, memleketin dahilinde iktidara sahip olanlar gaflet, dalalet ve hatta hıyanet içinde bulunabilirler. Hatta bu iktidar sahipleri şahsi menfaatlerini, müstevlilerin siyasi emelleriyle tevhit edebilirler. Millet, fakr ü zaruret içinde harap ve bitap düşmüş olabilir.

 Ey Türk istikbalinin evladı! İşte, bu ahval ve şerait içinde dahi vazifen, Türk İstiklal ve Cumhuriyetini kurtarmaktır. Muhtaç olduğun kudret, damarlarındaki asil kanda mevcuttur. 

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Nutuk’tan
20 Ekim 1927

Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı, yukarıdaki söylevde Mustafa Kemal Atatürk varislerine, Türk Milletine, Atatürk demokrasisinin ilkelerini savunma hakkını, doğrusu görevini vermiştir. Ilımlı İslam demokrasisinin değil! Müslüman demokrasi değil! Sadece demokrasi, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı, sizin demokrasinizle aynı olan.

 Evet, bir güç yükseliyor, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı. Yeni bir Kemal yükseliyor, Sayın Cumhurbaşkanı. Bunu bilmelisiniz, sayın Cumhurbaşkanı. Ve  O’nu tanımalısınız. Seçim günü hain AKP’yi Akdenize dökecektir, aynı Gazi Mustafa Kemal’in batılı işgalcilere yaptığı gibi. Sizin ve Amerika’nın şimdiki İslamo-faşist hükümeti desteklemeyi bırakmanız akıllıca olur, bir kez olsun, Türkiye’yi rahat bırakın. Ya da derin sularda, çalkantılı sularda yüzmesini bilseniz iyi olur!

Derin saygılarımla,

James C. Ryan, Ph.D.
İstanbul, Türkiye

Not: önceki üç mektubum ve kısa bir öz geçmişim ilişiktedir.

Published in Turkish by Aydınlık Dergisi
1 Ağustos 2010                                                                
AMERİKALI BARIŞ GÖNÜLLÜSÜ OBAMA’YI UYARDI
Hesap günü geliyor, AKP’yi destekleme artık!

http://www.aydinlik.com.tr/

CEM RYAN
http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

Is Fethullah Gulen a dangerous Islamist or a moderate visionary?

His critics perceive Gülen’s benign face as a mask — one disguising an Islamist wolf in a moderate sheep’s clothing. But who is Fethullah Gulen, really?

For more than a decade, one of the world’s most influential and controversial Muslim leaders has been convalescing on 26 acres in the Pocono Mountains.

In Ross Township — not far from the Blue Ridge flea market, a giant corn maze dubbed Mazezilla and a go-kart speedway — you will find a small metal sign bearing the name of the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center.

It is here that Fethullah Gülen, 68, lives.

Gülen is an ailing Turkish cleric whose vision of an Islam that embraces science, education and interfaith dialogue has earned him millions of followers — and the suspicion of many in Turkey’s secular establishment.

To his supporters, Gülen is the face of a more contemporary and tolerant Islam.

But his critics perceive Gülen’s benign face as a mask — one disguising an Islamist wolf in a moderate sheep’s clothing.

“To his detractors,” wrote Piotr Zalewski, a journalist who lives in Turkey, “he is the second coming of Ayatollah Khomeini, his avowedly peaceful movement hiding a nefarious secret agenda to transform secular Turkey into another Iran.”

But does Gülen truly pose a threat to national security? And what is so prominent a figure — he was named one of the most influential Muslims alive by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center and the world’s leading public intellectual by the readers of Foreign Policy magazine — doing in northeastern Pennsylvania?

‘Most Dangerous Islamist?’

Gülen’s idyll in the obscurity of the Poconos was shaken by a recent online broadside.

Bearing the headline, “Exclusive: World’s ‘Most Dangerous Islamist’ Alive, Well, and Living in Pennsylvania,” the article alleged several incendiary details about Gülen.

Gülen, warned the writer, Paul Williams, lived in an “Islamic armed fortress” in Saylorsburg, had amassed billions of dollars to foment dissent and topple governments and founded madrasahs worldwide to lay the groundwork for “the Islamization of the world.”

The article, on the website Family Security Matters and on Williams’ blog, The Last Crusade, flew around the Internet, alternately baffling and shocking the center’s neighbors and local officials.

Though it recycled several longstanding controversies about Gülen, many of its fresher claims are false.

For example, the article described visits from the FBI. The bureau had been there, but several residents of the center said it was many years ago, during Gülen’s immigration dispute (after a lawsuit, a federal judge granted Gülen status as an “alien of exceptional ability”). The FBI has not been there in years, according to Special Agent J.J. Klaver.

Williams also quoted unnamed neighbors and business owners complaining of “the incessant sounds of gunfire — including the rat-tat-tat of fully automatic weapons — coming from the compound and the low flying helicopter that circles the area in search of all intruders.”

None of the neighbors with whom the Pocono Record spoke said they had ever heard or seen what Williams described.

Instead, they said they’d shared picnics with the center’s residents, and had received visits from them after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Gülenists had knocked on their doors to apologize for what had been inflicted on innocents in the name of Islam.

“You couldn’t meet a nicer bunch of people,” said Howard Beers Jr., a Ross Township supervisor who lives next door and enters the property six or seven days a week, often unannounced and not through the front gate, to do construction work.

“If anyone would walk in on something, it would be me,” Beers said. “As long as I have ever been there, I have never, ever, seen a gun or heard a shot. All this stuff is totally, totally unfounded.”

Efforts to reach Williams through the Web site and his blog were unsuccessful.

A recent visit to Golden Generation revealed tranquil surroundings — a retreat, not a compound — landscaped with old-growth trees, a pond, basketball court, soccer field and several residences under construction.

Middle-aged, mild-mannered, mustached men in modern dress strolled on the grounds, apart from groups of children and hijab-wearing women.

They bore no weapons — just ornately designed plates and boxes of Turkish desserts, which they offered to American visitors.

“We are the very opposite of what that man says,” said Bekir Aksoy, president of the center.

And yet, Gülen is still seen by some as a threat to the established order of the Muslim world. But it is not quite for the reasons Williams described.

To understand why, the reclusive cleric must be placed in the context of the world’s 1 billion Muslims.

A threat to orthodoxy

“The West looks at Islam and says it’s a monolith,” said Akbar Ahmed, a professor at American University’s School of International Service and author of the book, “Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam,” who is supportive of Gülenism.

But like all large groups of people, Muslims can hold disparate beliefs, observe their faith to different degrees, and embody varying cross-currents and complexities.

In broad terms, a large number of Muslims belong to the literalist camp. It is typified by the Wahhabi sect of the religion and hard-core Islamic governments like Saudi Arabia’s, which recoil from the influence of the West and see the Koran, the Muslim holy book, as the literal truth.

At the other end of the spectrum are secular Muslims, such as the Turkish government, who are suspicious of Islam, and see it as a force to be subordinated to the state or kept to the confines of one’s home.

Between these two poles are other groups, including a small cluster called Sufis, out of whose mystical tradition Gülen arises.

The Gülenist interpretation of Islam publicly preaches the virtues of being outward looking, peaceful and respectful of religious diversity. If Gülenists are known for anything, it is for their abiding faith in inter-religious dialogue.

“The Gülen Institute rigorously and, I think very rightly, advocates prayer and interfaith dialogue and the role that they can play in helping ease tensions between peoples in our very complicated world,” James Baker, the former secretary of state, said to a Houston gathering of the institute in 2008.

They also promote engagement in science and education. While their work has a political aspect — in the sense that many Gülenists are concerned with social justice and communal responsibility — they profess to remain divorced from the hurly-burly of partisan politics.

“Power’s dominance is transitory; while the dominance of truth and justice is eternal,” Gülen wrote. “Sincere politicians should align themselves and their policies with truth and justice.”

Gülenism disturbs both poles of the Islamic spectrum — the secular and the fundamentalist.

“Modern Turkey is self-consciously secular,” said Ahmed. “To them, anyone talking about religion, like Gülen, and appearing to be an attractive and alternative paradigm would be a threat. He would seem to undermine secularism.”

Ahmed put this threat in starker terms when describing Gülen’s effect on the literalist wing of Islam.

“If the Taliban had Gülen and George W. Bush in the same room, they’d go for Gülen first,” said Ahmed. “He’d change their society.”

David Cuthell, executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University, went further, saying Gülen was trying to reconcile both poles of thought.

“If there’s going to be a Reformation in Islam,” Cuthell said, “this is where it’s going to be coming from.”

The road to Saylorsburg

Gülen’s popularity in Turkey grew over several decades, through the 1990s. He harnessed the tools of mass communication — television, radio, and now, the Internet — to spread his message of education and engagement, often to well-educated elites, said Muhammed Çetin, a Gülenist, author and sociologist who lives in Wind Gap.

“He was sending people to learn,” Çetin said, “not to be trapped by terrorists and limited views.”

Though his influence grew — he is thought to have more than 5 million followers — television proved to be his undoing. Gülen was quoted as urging his followers to weave themselves into the fabric of the power structure.

“Every method and path is acceptable (including) lying to people,” he allegedly said. Gülen critics have cited these words as evidence that he is orchestrating a shadow conspiracy to seize control and elevate religion.

Gülen has said the footage was manipulated and that he has no political aspirations.

Turkey accused Gülen of attempting to undermine the secular regime. His supporters described it as a trumped-up effort to discredit him. The case has never been proven or disproven.

Tensions mounted. The Welfare Party, which, like Gülen, was pro-religious, held power. But it clashed with Turkey’s military and was dissolved in 1998.

“Gülen felt like if he stuck around he’d end up in jail,” said Cuthell of the Institute of Turkish Studies.

At around the same time, Gülen was in Minnesota being treated for ill health. He suffers from diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, said Aksoy, president of Golden Generation. Recently, Gülen’s lungs have begun to fill with fluid.

Golden Generation had already been established in Saylorsburg on the grounds of a former summer camp. Kemal Ozgur, a microbiologist and Gülenist, met Gülen in Minnesota and invited him to stay in Pennsylvania. The cleric has remained there ever since.

Gülen seldom speaks publicly or appears outside his room. He will leave only to visit a group room in a chalet in the center, where he leads prayers five times daily.

“He doesn’t want to be in the limelight, and Pennsylvania works for him quite well,” said Cuthell.

But Gülen’s continued influence is reflected in a decentralized global network of schools, newspapers and think tanks that are supportive of his views.

Those who run the center refer to Gülen as their guest, and say the entrance is monitored to keep Gülen from being flooded by visiting Turks.

“He liked it so much, he never left,” Aksoy said. “It was an accident of history that he came here.”

By Dan Berrett, Pocono Record Writer

Bu Makale Icinde Ismi Gecen ve Fetullahi Sahsi Mefaatleri, Ceplerine Girecek Yesil Dolarlarin Askina, Hz.Muhammed’e  Esit Kilan Fetullahin Sadik Muritlerine Ithaf Olunur.

Biz  Ne Icin Hala Daldigimiz En Derin Kis Uykusundayiz??..  Laik Cumhuriyete Inanan Kesim Ne Icin Birbirlerini Bir Kasik Suda Bogmaya Calismakda??.. Ve Yaklasan Tehlikeyi Cok Uzakda Zannetmekte??   …Bilen Varsa Lutfen Bir Yorum Yazsin….

Bu Makaleyi Ve Bunun Yayinlandigi Turkish Forum  Web Adresini Girebildiginiz Tum Listelere Ve  Sizdeki Ozel  Adreslere Gonderiniz..

Web Adresine Zaman Zaman Girip .. Gelen Yorumlari Takip Edin .

Hepimizin, Hepimizden Ogrenmeye Ihtiyacimizin Var.. Belki, Bu Musterek Girisim,Bir An Once Bizleri Daldigimiz Derin Kis Uykusundan  Uyandirir Ve Birlesmenin yolarini  Ogreniriz

AYuce Tanridan Umit Kesilmez.. Din Tacirlerine Meydani Bos Birakmayalim..  Laik Turkiyemiz Icin , Korkmadan Ve Cekinmeden Mucadeleye Elele,Omuzomuza Devam Edelim Arkadaslar……

(Icinizden Bir Kisi)

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Gulen in action in USA

http://thelastcrusade.org/2010/04/06/islamic-armed-fortress-emerges-from-pocono-mountains/

16 April 2010

2010/4/16 SS Aya <ssaya@superonline.com>

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