Ismail Sezgin - Director, Centre for Hizmet Studies HARDtalk


Ismail Sezgin - Director, Centre for Hizmet Studies

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Welcome to Hardtalk, with me, Zeinab Badawi.

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The Turkish government is using a state of emergency

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to continue hunting down people it claims are followers

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of the reclusive, US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen.

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The government blames him for the recent coup attempt,

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and wants the US to extradite him to Turkey to stand trial.

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He denies involvement.

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My guest is Ismail Sezgin, director of the Centre

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for Hizmet Studies in the UK, a think tank founded by Gulenists.

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Is the Gulenist movement a threat to the Turkish state?

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Ismail Sezgin, welcome to HARDtalk.

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Ismail Sezgin, welcome to HARDtalk.

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Thank you very much.

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Fethullah Gulen has followers in about 160 countries,

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from Kenya to Kazakhstan.

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The movement runs schools, media outlets, businesses.

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What are the fundamental teachings of Fethullah Gulen?

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Well, we can simply define Hizmet as a religiously-inspired social

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movement which works around education, dialogue,

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and charitable activities.

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The core principle is that as a Muslim you are responsible

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towards God, and the way to fulfil those responsibly is you have

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to do certain things.

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And what you should do, and there is a historical line that

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Fethullah Gulen picks up, but that we should actually

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contribute to our society.

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Because the best of you is the most helpful to society, so how can

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I help to my society, by solving its problems?

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What problems?

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So we can debate around it, yes, but it is the ignorance,

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poverty and discrimination.

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Naturally, Fethullah Gulen opposes tyranny in his books,

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but this is mainly defined as ignorance, poverty

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and discrimination.

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So to sort problems out, as a social responsibility,

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you establish schools, education facilities,

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dialogue centres and charities.

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So dialogue between whom?

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Because I know that he espouses capitalist beliefs, and dialogue

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with Western nations, and urges his followers

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to adopt Western style, and yet also is inspired

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by the religion of Islam.

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Well, first of all, dialogue with whom, just itself,

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says dialogue with the other.

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You know, not imposing yourself, but engaging with other.

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And that "other" can be different people.

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In Turkish contexts, a majority-Muslim country,

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it might be religious people.

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But in other places it becomes other people

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you are sharing an environment with, your neighbours.

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So in that case, there is a way Islam actually is not

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against the dialogue.

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It inspires dialogue, it encourages dialogue,

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to engage with it in a good way, good neighbourhood.

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So, in that sense, dialogue is a concept, as far as you can

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remain faithful to your faith, and can present yourself in society.

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OK, but his beliefs, derived from religion,

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have put him on a collision course in the past,

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when he was living in Turkey, and Gulen's influence really

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precedes that of the AK Party.

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So, for example, he was on the run after the 1980 coup in Turkey.

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He Some of the generals thought he might have been involved in that.

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He has had a spell in detention.

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So this is somebody who has got a bit of controversy attached

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to his past, somebody who has made a stand

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against the secularists in Turkey.

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Well, in one way I wouldn't say a stand, but somebody who definitely

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came up with a different idea than what we have, you know, like,

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in majority-Muslim groups.

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For instance, when Ataturk abolished the Arabic alphabet

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and changed education.

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You are going back to the 1930s, with Ataturk.

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And Gulen's response was to reclaim education.

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It goes back to my own life.

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My grandfather didn't want to buy a TV in the house,

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because it was un-Islamic.

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My grandfather's generation had built an adjacent room to watch TV,

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because they had to engage with it.

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It calls people to take part in the media business,

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let's say as a Muslim who gives the news, who takes part.

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OK.

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So as I said, he was arrested, and then he was freed and he went

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to the United States for medical treatment,

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and then he decided to stay in the United States

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from about 1999 to 2000.

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He was an ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan until about three years ago,

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because they both obviously have parties or movements that

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are derived from religion, but fell out with Recep Tayyip Erdogan over

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a video that purportedly showed Erdogan involved with some kind

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of financial transactions.

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And that was blamed on Gulen, and Mr Erdogan says

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it was manufactured.

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OK, you know, that debate has never gone to court,

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so I won't be able to say what was the real case.

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But I would say this, is Gulen's understanding doesn't put

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politics at the heart of Islamic understanding.

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It says 95% of the religion is about individual life, and 5% may be

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about the restructuring of society.

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In political Islam, it is quite otherwise.

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But after 1997, Erdogan actually changed.

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With a group of people within the political Islamists,

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you know, they left and established the Justice and Development Party,

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which prioritised the fight against democratisation,

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against corruption, and against poverty.

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So that is pretty much the line that Gulen has always defended.

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He found a number of allies, like Kurds, and Gulen as well,

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and along the way they start dropping.

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We don't realise, some dropped earlier.

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That is an offshoot of Shia Islam.

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Here you have two allies, and now they are obviously highly

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critical, to put it mildly, of each other.

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And I put it to you that some observers have noticed,

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for instance Hakan Yavuz from Oxford University,

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that the Gulen movement thinks it should govern,

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as it did a lot of the hard work toppling the secularist movement.

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Is that really what is at the base of the tensions between the two?

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I think there is a lot of tension between the two.

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There is a lot to do with the Gulen movement becoming

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a global phenomenon.

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For instance, if a corruption scandal came about, would you be

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able to still support the government in Turkey,

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although it is corrupted, allegedly, and still maintain a pro-democratic,

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you know, an Islam that you advocate for the rest of the country?

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So you can't actually have two faiths.

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You have to say, OK, let's - maybe they should be cleared out.

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And Erdogan didn't like that, so that became...

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So you are presenting him as encouraging dialogue,

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and so on.

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But I have to put it to you that when, in 2007 and 2008,

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there were investigations into the military in Turkey,

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to see who were the secularists and so on there, Peter Westmacott,

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the former British ambassador to Turkey, said that there was a lot

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of fabricated evidence against military officers.

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And he says it was the followers of Gulen, in the police

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and prosecution, who fabricated that evidence.

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And that shows that you have a duplicity

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amongst his followers.

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I understand, and that is a very nasty thing if that is true.

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The thing is that...

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Why would he say that, the former British

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ambassador to Turkey?

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Well, I do understand that.

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There is that image of Gulen.

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And, like everything that goes wrong since a certain time,

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can sometimes traced back, can be blamed on him.

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Some might even have some credibility to it.

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But it is, you know, highly unlikely for me to believe

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in something before I see, you know, that has been

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taken to court, and said, well, this is done

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because of Fethullah Gulen.

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Alright, so I have to make it clear.

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You are not a spokesman for Gulen, and you have carried

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out extensive research, a PhD, on the teachings of Gulen.

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And obviously, as I said, you run a think-tank

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which is inspired, as your website says, and funded and founded

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by followers of Gulen.

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The Turkish government blames Gulen for the coup.

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A Turkish columnist, Dani Rodrik, not a supporter

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of the AK Party, says the claim that Gulenists must be behind the coup

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is not far-fetched.

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I would say it just shows that the Gulen movement is a very

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convenient scapegoat here.

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No-one really has any evidence.

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There has been 12 days.

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We don't know the general, and his involvement.

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We don't know who actually is the commander-in-chief

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of the coup.

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And then we should investigate who is behind it,

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the CIA or this and that.

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I am not claiming that is, but there are a lot

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of arguments like that.

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So I think jumping before you know who did the coup, jumping that

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who is behind the coup could be the CIA, is just like repeating

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the same arguments of the last three or four years.

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So you are saying it might be the CIA, is that what you

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are saying?

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No, I am not.

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Are you saying it could be Erdogan himself, as some are saying?

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No, I think this is a coup, and it is not a new thing.

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The Turkish military has a tutelage over the government.

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It is like Ataturk handed the Republic over to

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the army's supervision.

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They have always been the custodians of secularism.

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Just quickly on that, Ross Wilson says the idea

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that the CIA or the Americans could be behind this coup

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is preposterous, just to put that out there.

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The thing is, that claim doesn't have any credit.

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You said nobody has managed to get into court yet.

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It is still early days, as you said, from the mid-July coup.

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But there are observers who really know the Turkish scene very well,

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I will give you one example, Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik.

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I mention the fact that he is from a Turkish-Jewish family,

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not a AK Party supporter.

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He says the Gulenists had both the motives and the timing reasons

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to carry out this coup.

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He says that they learned of an impending sweep against them

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by the Turkish government.

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So they decided to move, and I quote, early and quickly,

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and he says this explains why the coup attempt seemed

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rushed and poorly planned.

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So the motives were there, with the Gulenists.

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Well, there are a lot of motives for a lot of people.

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And Dani Rodrik is an economist, and I know he has something

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against the movement.

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But what I know of the movement, for me...

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He's an intellectual with good intellectual credentials.

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You can't rubbish the messenger.

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I am not rubbishing them, I am saying he has his past as well.

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You have to remember, there is an emotional scar.

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In my case, the way I see it, what I have read from Gulen,

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and if I looked into, they exist in 160 countries,

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with their diminished existence in Turkey at the moment,

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it is not quite timely at all.

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If they do such a coup, that would finish the Gulen

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movement as we know it.

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Even to attempt a coup.

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They win it, they lose everything.

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They fail, they still lose everything.

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Not necessarily so.

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It is estimated he has 15-20 million followers worldwide,

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and the Turkish government has said that about 8,000 Turkish officers

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were involved in the coup, which is about 1.5%

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of the Turkish army.

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So, you know, why can that not be the case?

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We know that there have been senior military officers who have made

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confessions to being closet Gulenists.

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I will give you one example, Levent Turkkan, who was an aide

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to the chief of the general staff in Turkey.

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And again, Professor Dani Rodrik says his

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testimony is quite detailed.

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He names names, and it rings true.

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It is not just as a result of being allegedly beaten up.

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I don't understand that.

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But then again, we know that the secular branch

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within the army never liked Gulen.

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So in a failed coup, you can easily blame it on...

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You wouldn't claim it for yourself.

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Whoever did it, it is very convenient at the moment

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to say something.

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You say the secularists didn't like Gulen.

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But Erdogan has his roots in Islam.

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You could say the same about the secularists and the AK Party.

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At the moment there is a convenience.

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Dani Rodrik himself says that as well, and some other scholars,

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who claim otherwise.

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What I am saying is, people who are expert,

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there is a need for clarification.

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What did Fatullah Gulen himself say, in 1999,

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in a sermon to his followers?

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"Move within the arteries of the system, reach

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all the power centres."

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OK, so that is two sentences from a talk which was the backbone

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of the 1999 Gulen trial, which, you know, dragged untill

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2007, and then they had to actually let him go -

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he claimed he was not guilty - but they wanted to put a clause...

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But I'm just saying, he said that, "move

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within the arteries of the system."

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Well, just like Churchill said "Fight them on the beaches..."

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It is not quite the same...

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The court decided it was taken out of context, put

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together and doctored.

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You will never see the full...full video itself because maybe it

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explains the context of what he is said.

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The point it's making though, the point I'm making, Ismail Sezgin,

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is that there are a lot of followers of Gulen in state sectors -

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the civil service, the judiciary, the police, and the military -

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and that statement, whatever the court case said,

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it would seem to support that and it is not the only

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evidence I'm giving you.

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For example, a Brigadier-General, a doctor - he's got a PhD -

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from Chathan House, a British-based think tank,

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and also from Boston University, said in the mid-1980s,

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he was one of the key officers who investigated what was going on,

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Gulenist movement infiltration in military in the military academy

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and high schools and he says all the cadets around the table made

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it crystal clear to him that they were all loyal to Gulen.

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And he says, and I quote, "I hav no doubt their loyalty

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was not to the Turkish state or to the chain of command

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of the Turkish military but to Gulen."

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I mean, this is what the government means by a parallel state.

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It is not tolerable, is it?

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Here is the thing, are we talking about some people cannot take part

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in army, military as, you know, like white Turks

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and (INAUDIBLE) discussion?

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So they, as citizens, being part of army or

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bureaucracy is infiltration?

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You know, can we imagine this for England?

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Like 3 milliono f the population - let's say Hindus -

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can't take part in the army, they have to shave their beards

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and look like white...

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Yeah, but if they serve in the British army they have

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to pledge allegiance to the Queen, the head of state.

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What would not be tolerated is if they said "we actually

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have allegiance..."

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And I agree with that.

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"..Before we have allegiance to the Queen, we actually have this

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loyalty to this other person."

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No country would tolerate that.

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And nobody expects that toleration.

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We just want an investigation.

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Is it really those people who did this?

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In that case, as Gulen said, they need to be punished.

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But I have to say that 2000 schools are closed down.

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These are like 80% of the top schools in Turkey.

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There is a statistical inevitability that some of the graduates

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will be in high circles.

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Like, you know, Oxford and Cambridge graduates almost...

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How many percent of the government?

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It is not existance of a certain person who believes in a certain

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ideology is not the problem, but them committing

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the crime is a problem...

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If they have loyalty to somebody other than the Turkish state

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and they are serving in state institutions that is the accusation.

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I do not think loyalty...

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If it results in a coup.

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If it results in a coup.

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If Gulenists did this coup, nobody is defending them

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but what I am going against - I have heard a lot of accusations

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and I don't think that we should jump to conclusions

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that it was Gulenists.

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We just wait for the investigation.

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One of the deputy prime ministers of Turkey,

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Mehmet Simsek, said on HARDtalk that even before the coup,

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the government was carrying out its investigations to see

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who had infiltrated what state sector and he says now,

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after the coup, that the vast majority of those arrested

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in the government crackdown, have either been caught red-handed,

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because they were arrested while the coup was going on,

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or because their names appeared on the list of jobs for key

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positions that they would occupy after the coup.

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So he is basing those comments on that.

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I know some of the army generals who actually resisted the coup

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and helped to stop it, also detained as well.

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There might be a reason for that as well.

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My understanding is, yes, actually, classifying

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of Gulenists did not start even in 2013, we know

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the National Security Committee were actually deciding in 2004

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to keep an eye on citizens who are practising or who are not.

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There is an undemocratic thing going on already.

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So now, if you want to nail it to your political opponents

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and claim everybody that 60,000 people are Gulenists,

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and get rid of all positions like Kurdish teaching institutions

0:19:540:19:56

and this and that, that is a bit like, you know, a smokescreen,

0:19:560:20:00

what you are trying to do.

0:20:000:20:04

You are using it as a scapegoat although, I have to remind you that

0:20:040:20:07

when the coup was carried out, even the pro-Kurdosh

0:20:070:20:09

political alliance, the HDP, threw its weight behind Mr Erdogan,

0:20:090:20:11

and says we don't support this.

0:20:120:20:16

The CHP, the country's largest opposition party.

0:20:160:20:18

This was not about making a stand to support President Erdogan,

0:20:180:20:20

they saw it as a stand in support of democracy - the AK

0:20:200:20:23

party won legitimately the elections in the country.

0:20:230:20:28

Anybody who understands Gulen's teachings has

0:20:280:20:30

opposed the coup as well.

0:20:300:20:39

Gulenists are not on the other side of the fence in this matter.

0:20:390:20:42

And they said, no matter how corrupt a government is, this

0:20:420:20:45

is not the way...

0:20:450:20:46

I have to say, he has made a personal statement,

0:20:460:20:48

Fatullah Gulen, condemning the coup and denying involvement.

0:20:480:20:52

The problem some of the media, we think every official

0:20:520:20:54

is like a British official held accountable for their words.

0:20:540:20:57

For three years, an expert on the field, I watched Erdogan say

0:20:570:21:00

that I demanded from Obama, from America,

0:21:000:21:02

for Fatullah Gulen to be extradited.

0:21:020:21:03

Until CNN actually questioned have you

0:21:030:21:05

actually formally put...

0:21:050:21:09

They have now.

0:21:090:21:10

They have extradited.

0:21:100:21:11

Binadi Yildirim says that he's heartbroken.

0:21:110:21:18

He told the Wall Street journal that he would be heartbroken

0:21:180:21:20

if the US do not extradite him.

0:21:210:21:28

But the perception is that if you keep telling the Turkish

0:21:280:21:31

public in the time of elections that we are asking and they are not

0:21:310:21:34

giving, that is factually incorrect but it creates the perception

0:21:340:21:36

that there is America is behind...

0:21:360:21:38

(CROSSTALK).

0:21:380:21:39

And that is like not a legal thing any more but it is

0:21:390:21:42

politicising a legal process.

0:21:420:21:43

I said Fatullah Gulen said he wasn't involved and condemned the coup

0:21:430:21:46

but he also said in his statement, talked about the government

0:21:460:21:49

in Turkey shift towards a dictatorship which is

0:21:490:21:50

polarising the population.

0:21:500:21:51

Are they the words of somebody who wants to calm the situation

0:21:510:21:54

in Turkey after the coup?

0:21:540:21:58

If you are not really concentrating on Erdogan's political carry

0:21:580:22:01

and look at where Turkey was about a month ago and where

0:22:010:22:04

it is going to be a month from now, you wouold be really

0:22:040:22:07

worried about democracy.

0:22:070:22:09

At the moment what matters is we need to save democracy

0:22:090:22:11

and democracy is not only about rejecting the coup, it is also

0:22:110:22:14

about protecting minority rights...

0:22:140:22:20

It is also about finding who was responsible about killing

0:22:200:22:23

173 civilians, including one 16-year-old boy shot.

0:22:230:22:24

All those families...

0:22:240:22:32

Very tragic.

0:22:320:22:33

..in Turkey now that have no father, because it was mostly

0:22:330:22:36

men who were killed.

0:22:360:22:37

The government has got to find out.

0:22:370:22:41

And analysts said that the purge is legitimate, there does have to be

0:22:410:22:43

an aggressive response to find out who was involved in this coup.

0:22:430:22:51

I do agree.

0:22:510:22:52

We have to find who is involved.

0:22:520:22:54

It is very tragic.

0:22:540:22:55

We have to really put all our weight at the back but if we are talking

0:22:550:22:59

a government getting rid of - like Theresa May getting rid of 2700

0:22:590:23:02

judges who will make the investigation,

0:23:020:23:09

and from the first minute, before even the coup ends,

0:23:090:23:11

starts claiming this person is responsible...

0:23:110:23:13

They are investigating.

0:23:130:23:14

How the replaced judges will be objective.

0:23:140:23:15

The government says the due process of law will be looked at and so on.

0:23:150:23:20

Turkish novelist Elif Safak says people of varied backgrounds -

0:23:200:23:23

kemalis, Kurds, liberal, nationalists, conservatives -

0:23:230:23:24

stood shoulder to shoulder in resistance to the plotters,

0:23:240:23:26

for the first time in years Turkish society felt united.

0:23:260:23:31

This could actually lead to greater national unity in Turkey.

0:23:310:23:39

That is my first point when I realised the coup

0:23:390:23:41

is going down I said this might be the end of military

0:23:410:23:44

tutelage in Turkey.

0:23:440:23:49

That is one of the greatest siogns that people of Turkey

0:23:490:23:51

have embraced democracy.

0:23:510:23:52

It wasn't the case 10 years ago.

0:23:520:24:00

It will not be authoritarianism that is the result?

0:24:000:24:02

I hope not but at the moment there is a state of emergency.

0:24:020:24:05

I hope the people who are responsible are brought to justice

0:24:050:24:08

and punished accordingly.

0:24:080:24:09

Ismail Sezgin, thank you very much indeed for coming

0:24:090:24:11

on HARDtalk.

0:24:110:24:12

You're welcome.

0:24:120:24:13

Thank you.

0:24:130:24:15

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