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Welcome to Hardtalk, with me, Zeinab Badawi. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:10 | |
The Turkish government is using a state of emergency | 0:00:10 | 0:00:12 | |
to continue hunting down people it claims are followers | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
of the reclusive, US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
The government blames him for the recent coup attempt, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
and wants the US to extradite him to Turkey to stand trial. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
He denies involvement. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
My guest is Ismail Sezgin, director of the Centre | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
for Hizmet Studies in the UK, a think tank founded by Gulenists. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:40 | |
Is the Gulenist movement a threat to the Turkish state? | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
Ismail Sezgin, welcome to HARDtalk. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:52 | |
Ismail Sezgin, welcome to HARDtalk. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:11 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
Fethullah Gulen has followers in about 160 countries, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
from Kenya to Kazakhstan. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
The movement runs schools, media outlets, businesses. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
What are the fundamental teachings of Fethullah Gulen? | 0:01:24 | 0:01:33 | |
Well, we can simply define Hizmet as a religiously-inspired social | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
movement which works around education, dialogue, | 0:01:35 | 0:01:36 | |
and charitable activities. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:42 | |
The core principle is that as a Muslim you are responsible | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
towards God, and the way to fulfil those responsibly is you have | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
to do certain things. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:53 | |
And what you should do, and there is a historical line that | 0:01:53 | 0:01:55 | |
Fethullah Gulen picks up, but that we should actually | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
contribute to our society. | 0:01:58 | 0:01:59 | |
Because the best of you is the most helpful to society, so how can | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
I help to my society, by solving its problems? | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
What problems? | 0:02:05 | 0:02:05 | |
So we can debate around it, yes, but it is the ignorance, | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
poverty and discrimination. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:09 | |
Naturally, Fethullah Gulen opposes tyranny in his books, | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
but this is mainly defined as ignorance, poverty | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
and discrimination. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:16 | |
So to sort problems out, as a social responsibility, | 0:02:16 | 0:02:18 | |
you establish schools, education facilities, | 0:02:18 | 0:02:19 | |
dialogue centres and charities. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:20 | |
So dialogue between whom? | 0:02:20 | 0:02:22 | |
Because I know that he espouses capitalist beliefs, and dialogue | 0:02:22 | 0:02:31 | |
with Western nations, and urges his followers | 0:02:31 | 0:02:32 | |
to adopt Western style, and yet also is inspired | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
by the religion of Islam. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:44 | |
Well, first of all, dialogue with whom, just itself, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
says dialogue with the other. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
You know, not imposing yourself, but engaging with other. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
And that "other" can be different people. | 0:02:53 | 0:03:01 | |
In Turkish contexts, a majority-Muslim country, | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
it might be religious people. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:04 | |
But in other places it becomes other people | 0:03:04 | 0:03:06 | |
you are sharing an environment with, your neighbours. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:08 | |
So in that case, there is a way Islam actually is not | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
against the dialogue. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:18 | |
It inspires dialogue, it encourages dialogue, | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
to engage with it in a good way, good neighbourhood. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
So, in that sense, dialogue is a concept, as far as you can | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
remain faithful to your faith, and can present yourself in society. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
OK, but his beliefs, derived from religion, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
have put him on a collision course in the past, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
when he was living in Turkey, and Gulen's influence really | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
precedes that of the AK Party. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:41 | |
So, for example, he was on the run after the 1980 coup in Turkey. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:51 | |
He Some of the generals thought he might have been involved in that. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
He has had a spell in detention. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:10 | |
So this is somebody who has got a bit of controversy attached | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
to his past, somebody who has made a stand | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
against the secularists in Turkey. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:16 | |
Well, in one way I wouldn't say a stand, but somebody who definitely | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
came up with a different idea than what we have, you know, like, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
in majority-Muslim groups. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:24 | |
For instance, when Ataturk abolished the Arabic alphabet | 0:04:24 | 0:04:25 | |
and changed education. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:28 | |
You are going back to the 1930s, with Ataturk. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
And Gulen's response was to reclaim education. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:34 | |
It goes back to my own life. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
My grandfather didn't want to buy a TV in the house, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
because it was un-Islamic. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:45 | |
My grandfather's generation had built an adjacent room to watch TV, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:47 | |
because they had to engage with it. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:53 | |
It calls people to take part in the media business, | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
let's say as a Muslim who gives the news, who takes part. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:01 | |
OK. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:02 | |
So as I said, he was arrested, and then he was freed and he went | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
to the United States for medical treatment, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
and then he decided to stay in the United States | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
from about 1999 to 2000. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:15 | |
He was an ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan until about three years ago, | 0:05:15 | 0:05:20 | |
because they both obviously have parties or movements that | 0:05:20 | 0:05:26 | |
are derived from religion, but fell out with Recep Tayyip Erdogan over | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
a video that purportedly showed Erdogan involved with some kind | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
of financial transactions. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:39 | |
And that was blamed on Gulen, and Mr Erdogan says | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
it was manufactured. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:47 | |
OK, you know, that debate has never gone to court, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
so I won't be able to say what was the real case. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:58 | |
But I would say this, is Gulen's understanding doesn't put | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
politics at the heart of Islamic understanding. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:02 | |
It says 95% of the religion is about individual life, and 5% may be | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
about the restructuring of society. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:07 | |
In political Islam, it is quite otherwise. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:16 | |
But after 1997, Erdogan actually changed. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
With a group of people within the political Islamists, | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
you know, they left and established the Justice and Development Party, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
which prioritised the fight against democratisation, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:24 | |
against corruption, and against poverty. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:34 | |
So that is pretty much the line that Gulen has always defended. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:39 | |
He found a number of allies, like Kurds, and Gulen as well, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
and along the way they start dropping. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:51 | |
We don't realise, some dropped earlier. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:52 | |
That is an offshoot of Shia Islam. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
Here you have two allies, and now they are obviously highly | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
critical, to put it mildly, of each other. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:06 | |
And I put it to you that some observers have noticed, | 0:07:06 | 0:07:08 | |
for instance Hakan Yavuz from Oxford University, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
that the Gulen movement thinks it should govern, | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
as it did a lot of the hard work toppling the secularist movement. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:17 | |
Is that really what is at the base of the tensions between the two? | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
I think there is a lot of tension between the two. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
There is a lot to do with the Gulen movement becoming | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
a global phenomenon. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:28 | |
For instance, if a corruption scandal came about, would you be | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
able to still support the government in Turkey, | 0:07:31 | 0:07:38 | |
although it is corrupted, allegedly, and still maintain a pro-democratic, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
you know, an Islam that you advocate for the rest of the country? | 0:07:40 | 0:07:48 | |
So you can't actually have two faiths. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:49 | |
You have to say, OK, let's - maybe they should be cleared out. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
And Erdogan didn't like that, so that became... | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
So you are presenting him as encouraging dialogue, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
and so on. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
But I have to put it to you that when, in 2007 and 2008, | 0:08:02 | 0:08:06 | |
there were investigations into the military in Turkey, | 0:08:06 | 0:08:13 | |
to see who were the secularists and so on there, Peter Westmacott, | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
the former British ambassador to Turkey, said that there was a lot | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
of fabricated evidence against military officers. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:26 | |
And he says it was the followers of Gulen, in the police | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
and prosecution, who fabricated that evidence. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:36 | |
And that shows that you have a duplicity | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
amongst his followers. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:39 | |
I understand, and that is a very nasty thing if that is true. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
The thing is that... | 0:08:42 | 0:08:43 | |
Why would he say that, the former British | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
ambassador to Turkey? | 0:08:45 | 0:08:52 | |
Well, I do understand that. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
There is that image of Gulen. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:55 | |
And, like everything that goes wrong since a certain time, | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
can sometimes traced back, can be blamed on him. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:01 | |
Some might even have some credibility to it. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
But it is, you know, highly unlikely for me to believe | 0:09:03 | 0:09:06 | |
in something before I see, you know, that has been | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
taken to court, and said, well, this is done | 0:09:08 | 0:09:15 | |
because of Fethullah Gulen. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:16 | |
Alright, so I have to make it clear. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
You are not a spokesman for Gulen, and you have carried | 0:09:18 | 0:09:20 | |
out extensive research, a PhD, on the teachings of Gulen. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
And obviously, as I said, you run a think-tank | 0:09:24 | 0:09:26 | |
which is inspired, as your website says, and funded and founded | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
by followers of Gulen. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:33 | |
The Turkish government blames Gulen for the coup. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:35 | |
A Turkish columnist, Dani Rodrik, not a supporter | 0:09:35 | 0:09:37 | |
of the AK Party, says the claim that Gulenists must be behind the coup | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
is not far-fetched. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
I would say it just shows that the Gulen movement is a very | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
convenient scapegoat here. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:57 | |
No-one really has any evidence. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:03 | |
There has been 12 days. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:04 | |
We don't know the general, and his involvement. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:12 | |
We don't know who actually is the commander-in-chief | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
of the coup. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:15 | |
And then we should investigate who is behind it, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
the CIA or this and that. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:19 | |
I am not claiming that is, but there are a lot | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
of arguments like that. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:26 | |
So I think jumping before you know who did the coup, jumping that | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
who is behind the coup could be the CIA, is just like repeating | 0:10:29 | 0:10:32 | |
the same arguments of the last three or four years. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
So you are saying it might be the CIA, is that what you | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
are saying? | 0:10:38 | 0:10:38 | |
No, I am not. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:39 | |
Are you saying it could be Erdogan himself, as some are saying? | 0:10:39 | 0:10:44 | |
No, I think this is a coup, and it is not a new thing. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:51 | |
The Turkish military has a tutelage over the government. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
It is like Ataturk handed the Republic over to | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
the army's supervision. | 0:10:55 | 0:11:02 | |
They have always been the custodians of secularism. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
Just quickly on that, Ross Wilson says the idea | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
that the CIA or the Americans could be behind this coup | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
is preposterous, just to put that out there. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
The thing is, that claim doesn't have any credit. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:23 | |
You said nobody has managed to get into court yet. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
It is still early days, as you said, from the mid-July coup. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
But there are observers who really know the Turkish scene very well, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
I will give you one example, Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
I mention the fact that he is from a Turkish-Jewish family, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
not a AK Party supporter. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
He says the Gulenists had both the motives and the timing reasons | 0:11:39 | 0:11:42 | |
to carry out this coup. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:48 | |
He says that they learned of an impending sweep against them | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
by the Turkish government. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:56 | |
So they decided to move, and I quote, early and quickly, | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
and he says this explains why the coup attempt seemed | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
rushed and poorly planned. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:07 | |
So the motives were there, with the Gulenists. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:08 | |
Well, there are a lot of motives for a lot of people. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
And Dani Rodrik is an economist, and I know he has something | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
against the movement. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:15 | |
But what I know of the movement, for me... | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
He's an intellectual with good intellectual credentials. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
You can't rubbish the messenger. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:29 | |
I am not rubbishing them, I am saying he has his past as well. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:38 | |
You have to remember, there is an emotional scar. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:40 | |
In my case, the way I see it, what I have read from Gulen, | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
and if I looked into, they exist in 160 countries, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
with their diminished existence in Turkey at the moment, | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
it is not quite timely at all. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:49 | |
If they do such a coup, that would finish the Gulen | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
movement as we know it. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:53 | |
Even to attempt a coup. | 0:12:53 | 0:13:00 | |
They win it, they lose everything. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
They fail, they still lose everything. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:03 | |
Not necessarily so. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
It is estimated he has 15-20 million followers worldwide, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:08 | |
and the Turkish government has said that about 8,000 Turkish officers | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
were involved in the coup, which is about 1.5% | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
of the Turkish army. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
So, you know, why can that not be the case? | 0:13:16 | 0:13:25 | |
We know that there have been senior military officers who have made | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
confessions to being closet Gulenists. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:38 | |
I will give you one example, Levent Turkkan, who was an aide | 0:13:38 | 0:13:41 | |
to the chief of the general staff in Turkey. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
And again, Professor Dani Rodrik says his | 0:13:44 | 0:13:46 | |
testimony is quite detailed. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:51 | |
He names names, and it rings true. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
It is not just as a result of being allegedly beaten up. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:58 | |
I don't understand that. | 0:13:58 | 0:13:59 | |
But then again, we know that the secular branch | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
within the army never liked Gulen. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
So in a failed coup, you can easily blame it on... | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
You wouldn't claim it for yourself. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:08 | |
Whoever did it, it is very convenient at the moment | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
to say something. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:13 | |
You say the secularists didn't like Gulen. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:14 | |
But Erdogan has his roots in Islam. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
You could say the same about the secularists and the AK Party. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:24 | |
At the moment there is a convenience. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
Dani Rodrik himself says that as well, and some other scholars, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
who claim otherwise. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:29 | |
What I am saying is, people who are expert, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
there is a need for clarification. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
What did Fatullah Gulen himself say, in 1999, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
in a sermon to his followers? | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
"Move within the arteries of the system, reach | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
all the power centres." | 0:14:51 | 0:14:58 | |
OK, so that is two sentences from a talk which was the backbone | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
of the 1999 Gulen trial, which, you know, dragged untill | 0:15:02 | 0:15:04 | |
2007, and then they had to actually let him go - | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
he claimed he was not guilty - but they wanted to put a clause... | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
But I'm just saying, he said that, "move | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
within the arteries of the system." | 0:15:12 | 0:15:18 | |
Well, just like Churchill said "Fight them on the beaches..." | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
It is not quite the same... | 0:15:20 | 0:15:22 | |
The court decided it was taken out of context, put | 0:15:22 | 0:15:24 | |
together and doctored. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
You will never see the full...full video itself because maybe it | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
explains the context of what he is said. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:35 | |
The point it's making though, the point I'm making, Ismail Sezgin, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:45 | |
is that there are a lot of followers of Gulen in state sectors - | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
the civil service, the judiciary, the police, and the military - | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
and that statement, whatever the court case said, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:54 | |
it would seem to support that and it is not the only | 0:15:54 | 0:15:56 | |
evidence I'm giving you. | 0:15:57 | 0:15:57 | |
For example, a Brigadier-General, a doctor - he's got a PhD - | 0:15:57 | 0:16:00 | |
from Chathan House, a British-based think tank, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
and also from Boston University, said in the mid-1980s, | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
he was one of the key officers who investigated what was going on, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
Gulenist movement infiltration in military in the military academy | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
and high schools and he says all the cadets around the table made | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
it crystal clear to him that they were all loyal to Gulen. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
And he says, and I quote, "I hav no doubt their loyalty | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
was not to the Turkish state or to the chain of command | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
of the Turkish military but to Gulen." | 0:16:28 | 0:16:33 | |
I mean, this is what the government means by a parallel state. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
It is not tolerable, is it? | 0:16:35 | 0:16:40 | |
Here is the thing, are we talking about some people cannot take part | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
in army, military as, you know, like white Turks | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
and (INAUDIBLE) discussion? | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
So they, as citizens, being part of army or | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
bureaucracy is infiltration? | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
You know, can we imagine this for England? | 0:16:55 | 0:16:57 | |
Like 3 milliono f the population - let's say Hindus - | 0:16:57 | 0:17:00 | |
can't take part in the army, they have to shave their beards | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
and look like white... | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
Yeah, but if they serve in the British army they have | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
to pledge allegiance to the Queen, the head of state. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
What would not be tolerated is if they said "we actually | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
have allegiance..." | 0:17:13 | 0:17:15 | |
And I agree with that. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:16 | |
"..Before we have allegiance to the Queen, we actually have this | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
loyalty to this other person." | 0:17:19 | 0:17:20 | |
No country would tolerate that. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
And nobody expects that toleration. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:25 | |
We just want an investigation. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
Is it really those people who did this? | 0:17:27 | 0:17:34 | |
In that case, as Gulen said, they need to be punished. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:36 | |
But I have to say that 2000 schools are closed down. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:43 | |
These are like 80% of the top schools in Turkey. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
There is a statistical inevitability that some of the graduates | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
will be in high circles. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
Like, you know, Oxford and Cambridge graduates almost... | 0:17:51 | 0:17:53 | |
How many percent of the government? | 0:17:53 | 0:17:59 | |
It is not existance of a certain person who believes in a certain | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
ideology is not the problem, but them committing | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
the crime is a problem... | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
If they have loyalty to somebody other than the Turkish state | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
and they are serving in state institutions that is the accusation. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:19 | |
I do not think loyalty... | 0:18:19 | 0:18:20 | |
If it results in a coup. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:21 | |
If it results in a coup. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
If Gulenists did this coup, nobody is defending them | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
but what I am going against - I have heard a lot of accusations | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
and I don't think that we should jump to conclusions | 0:18:30 | 0:18:32 | |
that it was Gulenists. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:33 | |
We just wait for the investigation. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:41 | |
One of the deputy prime ministers of Turkey, | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
Mehmet Simsek, said on HARDtalk that even before the coup, | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
the government was carrying out its investigations to see | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
who had infiltrated what state sector and he says now, | 0:18:48 | 0:18:56 | |
after the coup, that the vast majority of those arrested | 0:18:56 | 0:18:58 | |
in the government crackdown, have either been caught red-handed, | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
because they were arrested while the coup was going on, | 0:19:00 | 0:19:05 | |
or because their names appeared on the list of jobs for key | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
positions that they would occupy after the coup. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
So he is basing those comments on that. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:20 | |
I know some of the army generals who actually resisted the coup | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
and helped to stop it, also detained as well. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
There might be a reason for that as well. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:36 | |
My understanding is, yes, actually, classifying | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
of Gulenists did not start even in 2013, we know | 0:19:38 | 0:19:40 | |
the National Security Committee were actually deciding in 2004 | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
to keep an eye on citizens who are practising or who are not. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:47 | |
There is an undemocratic thing going on already. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:49 | |
So now, if you want to nail it to your political opponents | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
and claim everybody that 60,000 people are Gulenists, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
and get rid of all positions like Kurdish teaching institutions | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
and this and that, that is a bit like, you know, a smokescreen, | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
what you are trying to do. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:04 | |
You are using it as a scapegoat although, I have to remind you that | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
when the coup was carried out, even the pro-Kurdosh | 0:20:07 | 0:20:09 | |
political alliance, the HDP, threw its weight behind Mr Erdogan, | 0:20:09 | 0:20:11 | |
and says we don't support this. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
The CHP, the country's largest opposition party. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
This was not about making a stand to support President Erdogan, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
they saw it as a stand in support of democracy - the AK | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
party won legitimately the elections in the country. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:28 | |
Anybody who understands Gulen's teachings has | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
opposed the coup as well. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:39 | |
Gulenists are not on the other side of the fence in this matter. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
And they said, no matter how corrupt a government is, this | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
is not the way... | 0:20:45 | 0:20:46 | |
I have to say, he has made a personal statement, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
Fatullah Gulen, condemning the coup and denying involvement. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
The problem some of the media, we think every official | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
is like a British official held accountable for their words. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
For three years, an expert on the field, I watched Erdogan say | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
that I demanded from Obama, from America, | 0:21:00 | 0:21:02 | |
for Fatullah Gulen to be extradited. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:03 | |
Until CNN actually questioned have you | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
actually formally put... | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
They have now. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:10 | |
They have extradited. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:11 | |
Binadi Yildirim says that he's heartbroken. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:18 | |
He told the Wall Street journal that he would be heartbroken | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
if the US do not extradite him. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:28 | |
But the perception is that if you keep telling the Turkish | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
public in the time of elections that we are asking and they are not | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
giving, that is factually incorrect but it creates the perception | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
that there is America is behind... | 0:21:36 | 0:21:38 | |
(CROSSTALK). | 0:21:38 | 0:21:39 | |
And that is like not a legal thing any more but it is | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
politicising a legal process. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:43 | |
I said Fatullah Gulen said he wasn't involved and condemned the coup | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
but he also said in his statement, talked about the government | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
in Turkey shift towards a dictatorship which is | 0:21:49 | 0:21:50 | |
polarising the population. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:51 | |
Are they the words of somebody who wants to calm the situation | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
in Turkey after the coup? | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
If you are not really concentrating on Erdogan's political carry | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
and look at where Turkey was about a month ago and where | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
it is going to be a month from now, you wouold be really | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
worried about democracy. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:09 | |
At the moment what matters is we need to save democracy | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
and democracy is not only about rejecting the coup, it is also | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
about protecting minority rights... | 0:22:14 | 0:22:20 | |
It is also about finding who was responsible about killing | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
173 civilians, including one 16-year-old boy shot. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:24 | |
All those families... | 0:22:24 | 0:22:32 | |
Very tragic. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:33 | |
..in Turkey now that have no father, because it was mostly | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
men who were killed. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:37 | |
The government has got to find out. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:41 | |
And analysts said that the purge is legitimate, there does have to be | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
an aggressive response to find out who was involved in this coup. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:51 | |
I do agree. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:52 | |
We have to find who is involved. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:54 | |
It is very tragic. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:55 | |
We have to really put all our weight at the back but if we are talking | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
a government getting rid of - like Theresa May getting rid of 2700 | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
judges who will make the investigation, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:09 | |
and from the first minute, before even the coup ends, | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
starts claiming this person is responsible... | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
They are investigating. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:14 | |
How the replaced judges will be objective. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:15 | |
The government says the due process of law will be looked at and so on. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
Turkish novelist Elif Safak says people of varied backgrounds - | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
kemalis, Kurds, liberal, nationalists, conservatives - | 0:23:23 | 0:23:24 | |
stood shoulder to shoulder in resistance to the plotters, | 0:23:24 | 0:23:26 | |
for the first time in years Turkish society felt united. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:31 | |
This could actually lead to greater national unity in Turkey. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:39 | |
That is my first point when I realised the coup | 0:23:39 | 0:23:41 | |
is going down I said this might be the end of military | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
tutelage in Turkey. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:49 | |
That is one of the greatest siogns that people of Turkey | 0:23:49 | 0:23:51 | |
have embraced democracy. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:52 | |
It wasn't the case 10 years ago. | 0:23:52 | 0:24:00 | |
It will not be authoritarianism that is the result? | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
I hope not but at the moment there is a state of emergency. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
I hope the people who are responsible are brought to justice | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
and punished accordingly. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:09 | |
Ismail Sezgin, thank you very much indeed for coming | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
on HARDtalk. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:12 | |
You're welcome. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:13 | |
Thank you. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 |