Being an academic is not an easy thing. In many countries, it seems you are always between a rock and a hard place when you are in academia. Politics permeate the academic halls, where positions might be assigned or created for political allies. Besides this, as a faculty member your superiors have unrealistic expectations of you, such as excruciating teaching loads and a tough oral exam with professors in your field in order to gain some tenure. In recent years, Turkey has unfortunately been one of the worst cases where all these challenges have become unbearable. Arguably the biggest problem of Turkish academics has been the lack of freedom to become critical intellectual voices in public spheres. Academics’ speeches, actions, and political views have traditionally been monitored and tracked by the Higher Education Council or government appointed University Presidents. After the July 15, 2016 coup however, some academicians’ problems became more of a struggle to stay alive. Why were thousands of academics and tens of thousands of teachers fired and arrested for “taking a part in” a military coup attempt on July 15 in Turkey? I can’t find any rational answers.

The current difficult lives of academics are connected to the societal and historical understanding of authority in Turkey. After the coup d’état in 1980, Turkish society witnessed an era where the state and the government were taken as sacred concepts. A lingering tradition since the ancient Turkish states has been that people would rather avoid advocating for truth and morals when they feared doing so would come back and bite them through the cold force of an authoritarian state. Psychological and even physical lynches could and have happened since the power owners and patriarchs are always positioned to be the identifiers of “transgressors” and dictators of the “consequences.” Few people advocated for human rights. For instance, when a group of academics signed an ‘academics for peace’ declaration in January 2016, over 60 Turkish academicians were fired or punished for “spreading Kurdish terrorist propaganda and undermining the country’s national security.” There was no big public uproar, since anyone objecting to it would be demonized as “terrorist supporters.”

Speaking your mind, expressing your opposition, and writing freely have never been easy for thinkers and academics in autocratic regimes. Unfortunately, Turkey has become one such regime in which critical academics are among those facing collective hatred and punishment for their beliefs and views.

These same arguments were recently used as a social lynch for another group: followers of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. For the last five years since one the biggest corruption scandals involving cabinet members and President Erdogan’s son broke, each investigation has been shut down by Erdoğan with the accusation towards Gülen followers, aka the Hizmet movement, that they were plotting a coup attempt against the government. What followed was the complete overhauling of the police force and police education institutions with the suspicion that many Gülen followers had “infiltrated” their ranks. After the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which Erdoğan described as “a gift from God,” he also shut down the military and purged half of all high ranking officers, along with thousands of lower ranking members of military, many of whom are still in jail now. 15 major universities were shut down, along with more than 3,000 other schools and hospitals. In the government sector, from health to judiciary, from education to academia, more than 150,000 lost their jobs and 80,000 were arrested upon accusations of being a member of a so called “terrorist organization” with such “evidence” as using free apps like WhatsApp or Bylock, or having Gülen’s books at home or having an account at a once successful bank: Bank Asya. Many reports of abuse and torture in jails emerged since then, and about 40,000 previously convicted inmates were set free to open up space for Gülen’s followers.[1]

Erdoğan’s regime easily demonizes others who are in the opposition by putting them into the “Gülenist” melting pot. For example, atheist religious history professor Candan Badem was first detained, then released, then fired from his job for belonging to the “FETO” organization, a dysphemism produced by the government for Gülen’s followers. The people in Turkey are silent about the genocidal actions of the government because the government has the power to silence even the journalists. Hysteria is in its peak as my own family tells me I cannot send them money from U.S., call them from U.S., or invite them to U.S., which are all received with suspicion by the government that you may be affiliated with the Gülen movement (Gülen has been a US resident for almost two decades). While there are serious claims that Erdoğan himself might have had a part in the coup to consolidate his power, no one including judges, prosecutors, (who are themselves jailed), or the media (Erdoğan shut down all opposition media and arrested over a hundred journalists) can investigate these claims fully. The judiciary system is also on complete lockdown: it made the news when a judge was arrested during his very own court hearing. On another account, as a judge couple were being arrested, their two children, one of them a toddler, were locked in the house from outside and left home alone until their grandparents arrived from a faraway city late at night and found them hungry and desperate. Of the other kids whose parents were arrested some were taken into state custody in unknown locations and not released to their relatives even though they requested them. A female journalist, Ayşenur Parıldak, reported being sexually harassed and tortured while in custody and being confined to a cell. A left-wing journalist, Aslı Erdoğan, was withheld from taking any medicine or being provided a cardigan despite her multiple serious health issues and cold prison cells. She and other left-wing prisoners got the same accusation. After her release, she is now in exile in Germany, awaiting the outcome of her court case in absentia.[2]

Universities were already struggling with favoritism and unfair practices in Turkey. After the so called coup attempt, all university presidents were called into a national meeting organized by the Director of Higher Education Council (HEC) in Turkey, who threatened them that he would take necessary actions against those who “act slowly” in purging Gülen related academics.[3] This was the start of the public statement and demonstration contest among universities where University Faculty Senates hastily wrote statements shunning the group and calling them FETO (abbreviated for “Fethullah Terrorist Organization”) as directed by pro-Erdoğan media, and walked in groups in the streets protesting FETO, while there was no real evidence, official prosecution, or trial. This public hysteria resulted in thousands of fellow academics being fired without any evidence or due process based simply on the lists of profiling done by Erdoğan’s regime officials. Worse, many unions were asking when these positions would be reposted so “other” citizens could apply. Obviously, again, no one was questioning the ethics of this situation, but rather trying to think of ways to benefit from it, whether by trying to replace them with their own kin, or reporting on others to get them fired. Their attitude was, “If you are not going to bite me, long live the rattlesnake, and bite others as you wish!” As an academic who proudly thinks academics can carry an identity to become the bearers of hard truths, this is especially scary to me; not only did academics in Turkey remain silent about social injustices, but some unscrupulous people helped perpetuate this silence by demonizing a group of colleagues. Of course those people proved their worthiness of being strong allies to the current hierarchical system of university presidents, who follow orders from the Director of HEC, who in turn is reporting to the government. It is obvious that this system cannot produce the next generation of critical thinkers and intellectuals.

Why do I care about this personally? Along with some of my friends, my brother, who is an academic, is currently in jail for an unknown accusation after the coup attempt. His wife, who was an entry level secretary within a small municipality, was the first one to be detained. Police stormed into their house 2 days after he and his wife learned they were fired from their jobs. Since the government increased the detainment period to 30 days we were under a big trauma after they took her, not knowing her whereabouts since no one was allowed to make any contact with her, including any attorneys. Was she being raped or tortured? Was she being beaten severely to get some kind of confession out? What is currently happening is similar to what happened in World War II or the Bosnian War where an entire system to protect basic human rights collapsed along with the judiciary system and sense of justice. Can you imagine the feelings of a helpless husband, mother, or father? Worse, can you imagine them having a 2-year old toddler screaming non-stop after witnessing the shock of his mother violently being taken from her family? Three days had passed when she was in front of the judge and the prosecutor for “being a member of a terrorist organization.” Seeing how fragile her health was, the prosecutor asked for her release. She was united with her son at last. However, those judges and prosecutors were shortly fired for not being ruthless enough to hunt all Gülen followers. We don’t know where she and her son is, since she left her town to avoid the trauma of being separated from her toddler, fearing they may call for her arrest again.

A few days after they released her, my brother was taken into custody. He was a shining star in his work, attending each and every conference in his area of expertise, publishing both Turkish and English articles. Philosophy was his passion. They released him after a few days of detainment and courts. Later, when the prosecutors were changed, they sent out another warrant for his arrest. He immediately turned himself in knowing he had nothing to hide. They seized his computer, all of his digital files, and his phone, and they were never returned. All of his academic work was gone. In the first five days of his arrest, his wife snuggled with his coat, refused to eat anything, and just lay in bed. Their toddler still is under a huge shock, and asks for his dad and does not understand why they had to leave his toys, clothes, and everything else he knew to be home.

Besides being permanently fired from their jobs with no social security, health benefits, and retirement without any due process, these academics are no longer able to be hired by any other company or institution due to official and unofficial orders from the government dehumanizing them. Their children who have terminal diseases got their Medicaid cancelled and denied any services at hospitals. They were left to become homeless, helpless, and hungry. “They will beg us to kill them,” Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekçi said,[4] while a municipal director of AKP, the ruling party, said: “Let them eat tree roots.”[5]

The collective hatred towards and punishment of all opposition for their beliefs is reminiscent of Jewish genocide under Hitler’s regime. This incredible violation of human rights destroyed Turkish academia, freedom of speech, writing, and research, and caused social fractions and hatred among universities. To all governments and to the international community of academics: We must support the rights of these scholars and not let another genocide happen in Europe in the 21^st century.

[1] www.turkeypurge.com

[2] https://pen.org/advocacy-case/asli-erdogan/

[3] https://tr.sputniknews.com/turkiye/201607191023938783-yok-baskani-universite-feto/

[4] https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/bakan-zeybekci-gebertin-bizi-diye-yalvaracaklar-122392.html

[5] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/ak-parti-il-baskanindan-fetoculere-agac-koku-yesinler-40242531

Since July 15, 2016, following a deplorable coup attempt, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has systematically persecuted innocent people — arresting, detaining, firing and otherwise ruining the lives of more than 300,000 Turkish citizens, be they Kurds, Alevis, secularists, leftists, journalists, academics or participants of Hizmet, the peaceful humanitarian movement with which I am associated.

As the coup attempt unfolded, I fiercely denounced it and denied any involvement. Furthermore, I said that anyone who participated in the putsch betrayed my ideals. Nevertheless, and without evidence, Erdogan immediately accused me of orchestrating it from 5,000 miles away.

The next day, the government produced lists of thousands of individuals whom they tied to Hizmet — for opening a bank account, teaching at a school or reporting for a newspaper — and treated such an affiliation as a crime and began destroying their lives. The lists included people who had been dead for months and people who had been serving at NATO’s European headquarters at the time. International watchdogs have reported numerous abductions, in addition to torture and deaths in detention. The government pursued innocent people outside Turkey, pressuring Malaysia, for instance, to deport three Hizmet sympathizers in May 2017, including a school principal who has lived there for more than a decade, to face certain imprisonment and likely torture.

In April, the president won a narrow referendum victory— amid allegations of serious fraud — to form an “executive presidency” without checks and balances, enabling him to control all three branches of the government. To be sure, through purges and corruption, much of this power was already in his hands. I fear for the Turkish people as they enter this new stage of authoritarianism.

It didn’t start this way. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came into power in 2002 by promising democratic reforms in pursuit of European Union membership. But as time went on, Erdogan became increasingly intolerant of dissent. He facilitated the transfer of many media outlets to his cronies through government regulatory agencies. In June of 2013, he crushed the Gezi Park protesters. In December of that year, when his cabinet members were implicated in a massive graft probe, he responded by subjugating the judiciary and the media. The “temporary” state of emergency declared after last July 15 is still in effect. According to Amnesty International, one-third of all imprisoned journalists in the world are in Turkish prisons.

Erdogan’s persecution of his people is not simply a domestic matter. The ongoing pursuit of civil society, journalists, academics and Kurds in Turkey is threatening the long-term stability of the country. The Turkish population already is strongly polarized on the AKP regime. A Turkey under a dictatorial regime, providing haven to violent radicals and pushing its Kurdish citizens into desperation, would be a nightmare for Middle East security.

The people of Turkey need the support of their allies around the world to restore their democracy.

Two measures are critical to reversing the democratic regression in Turkey.

First, a new civilian constitution should be drafted through a democratic process involving the input of all segments of society and that is on par with international legal and humanitarian norms, and drawing lessons from the success of long-term democracies in the West.

Second, a school curriculum that emphasizes democratic and pluralistic values and encourages critical thinking must be developed. Every student must learn the importance of balancing state powers with individual rights, the separation of powers, judicial independence and press freedom, and the dangers of extreme nationalism, politicization of religion and veneration of the state or any leader.

Before either of those things can happen, however, the Turkish government must stop the repression of its people and redress the rights of individuals who have been wronged by Erdogan without due process.

I probably will not live to see Turkey become an exemplary democracy, but I pray that the downward authoritarian drift can be stopped before it is too late.

The Islamic intellectual, the honorable Fethullah Gülen, is one of the distinguished scholars of our century. He is one of Allah’s blessings for us. When we look at his personal life, his social life, and his services to the Islamic world, we only see his good deeds. With his notion of service, which hasn’t only been restricted to the Islamic world but has spread to 160 countries, Mr. Gülen has had an extraordinarily positive impact.

We’ve read Mr. Gülen’s books and have gotten to know him through his friends and his followers. As opposed to what some people keep repeating, we have not seen anything even hinting at terrorism in any part of his life.

This man lives a life – alhamdulillah – in close connection with Allah, which leads to a reconciliation with the hearts of the people surrounding him.

When hearts are reconciled and gathered around the love of Allah, people will be honored with Allah’s gratification and blessing, and they will start doing everything for the sake of Allah.

When we look at the people around him, the scholars, tradesmen, and people from different levels of life, we see them live their lives according to our Prophet’s Sunnah and life. 

As I mentioned earlier, we have never seen or known anything about Mr. Gülen except for the way he has helped people grow closer to Allah. All we have seen is how he reconciles hearts and helps them prepare to appear before Allah.

This is how we know Mr. Gülen. And we’ve never seen any single indication of terrorism in any of his books. Such an allegation cannot be true for him or people around him.

This is my testimony about Mr. Gülen. May Allah help us, may He bestow comprehension and understanding on all who accuse him. I pray Allah that my testimony will be considered among my and Mr. Gülen’s good deeds on the Day of Judgment.

Mr. Gülen sees the whole of humanity – Muslims and non-Muslims – as his children, and he works to reconcile hearts, trying to bring together all humanity as humble servants to Allah.

I have seen him in Turkey. He was preaching as he was crying and saying, “Some people are claiming that I will found a state and I am after a sultanate.” But then he added, “Who am I to do these things? These are untrue claims. My life is evident.”

We know Mr. Gülen’s life itself has ruled out these claims. 

To be clear, he put forward his beliefs with his deeds. May Allah’s help and assistance be with him.

This is a transcript of a video by Spectra Media (December 6, 2015). Published with permission.

Whatever the circumstances of the coup, the president’s insistence on needing to root out the shadowy forces behind it were hard to argue with. In the days that followed, however, it quickly became clear that whatever prior knowledge Erdogan might have had of moves against him, he was well prepared with a very long list of people and institutions that, he insisted, needed to be purged.

If his attribution of blame to an unlikely religious civil society network beggared belief, even stranger was the extent and scope of the post-coup purge. Almost half of the military flag offices, the generals and admirals, were purged, along with one third of the judiciary, and thousands of academics, including every single dean and university president. The rate of sackings, detentions, and arrests in the first ten days after the coup attempt was breathtaking. The regime made no pretense of needing to investigate; it simply asserted guilt by association with the “terrorists,” and quickly and methodically rounded up “known enemies.”

The purges began even as the coup attempt was being squashed, with the president urging crowds to take to the streets and stare-down the opposition. The response quickly took on the character of a witch hunt as neighbors, colleagues, and family members were urged to turn in the guilty, however slender the pretext. The accused were all declared guilty of supporting FETO, the pejorative term used to describe followers of exiled Sufi cleric Fethullah Gülen, even though many of those targeted in the purges, especially in the military, police, judiciary, and media were clearly Kemalist or leftist secularists with no religious affiliations of any kind. In the months that followed the net was widened to include Kurdish activists and prominent dissidents of all stripes.   Guilt simply required being linked, in some way, with the “FETO coup plotters,” but no evidence or explanation was given. By year’s end, when the parliamentary commission to investigate the events of July 15 would be abruptly disbanded leaving behind many unanswered questions, the contradictions had piled up in accounts from officials of what had occurred.

Half a year on, the numbers purged are staggering – and are still growing by the week: over 124,000 people have been sacked, and of these, more than 84,000 have been detained. Around 43,000 people have been formally arrested. The number of academics sacked is now around 7,000 and they are joined by over 3,800 judges and prosecutors. Almost all of Turkey’s independent media outlets, in excess of 195, have been shut down, and over 145 journalists arrested. More than 2,100 schools, universities and associated colleges and dormitories have been shut down. And over 550 businesses, with tens of billions of dollars in assets, have been seized.

Within days of the coup attempt, the extent to which president Erdogan would “make good” on his “God-given opportunity” to cleanse and purge became clear as he declared emergency rule and suspended parliamentary government.   It soon became evident, however, that he was focused not on national security, but on consolidating personal power. A measure of how far Turkey has fallen came on the 21st of October, when the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2016 was released. Turkey had plummeted to 108th place out of all 113 countries surveyed in terms of constraints on government powers and fundamental rights.

By November, all hope for a quick return to democracy was lost. On the 4th of November, nine parliamentarians from Turkey’s third largest political party, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), were arrested in the wake of a series of purges against ethnic Kurdish organizations. Across the country, access to social media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp – was blocked, and in the Kurdish southeast access to the internet as a whole was cut-off.

On the 8th of November, President Erdogan and his increasingly authoritarian and Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) lodged criminal complaints against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the country’s second largest party, the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), as well as other senior MPs. They were accused of making gross insults against the president. In a statement the previous day that had triggered the legal action the CHP said that, "Turkey is now going through a dark and authoritarian coup staged by the presidential palace." The hitherto compliant left-of-center CHP issued the statement after an emergency party meeting called in response to the arrest of the HDP MPs and the October 31st detention of the editor-in-chief and eight other senior journalists of the sole remaining significant opposition newspaper, Cumhuriyet (the Republic – a paper closely aligned with the CHP). The statement added, "The current political situation poses a serious threat against the freedom of our people and future of our country."

On the same day, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said of the purges, “These are methods, one must say this bluntly, that were used during Nazi rule. And there has been a really, really bad evolution in Turkey since July that we as the European Union cannot simply accept.”

Even before these events, on November 1st, the New York Times editorial team was sufficiently concerned about the situation in Turkey to write that, “The United States and Europe are horrified that Mr. Erdogan has strayed so completely from the track he was on when he first became the Turkish prime minister in 2003 and was hailed for building a model Muslim democracy.” In the eyes of one of the world’s most respected newspapers, the situation was unambiguous:
“What is unnerving in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s march to authoritarianism is how dismally familiar it is: the coup that becomes a pretext for a massive roundup of real and imagined enemies; the claims to be the one man who can withstand the    onslaught of foreign foes; the invocation of purported historical slights; the silencing          of the news media. The world has seen this before in other countries. The pattern is        tried and true; the tough question is how to break it.”

At the same time, German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth said his country would willingly accept asylum requests from Turks. He said Germany is “open to all those politically persecuted as a matter of principle.”

Finally, in its November 12th issue, The Economist published an article entitled ‘While you were watching Trump…Turkey locks up dissidents: President Erdogan keeps on purging.’ The article concluded with the line, “Turkey’s democracy is on life support. Mr. Erdogan is holding the plug.”

What was happening in Turkey was not lost upon friendly governments. Even as the coup-attempt was unfolding, there were reports of international intelligence agencies intercepting transmissions which suggested that the coup-attempt was being seized upon to consolidate the president’s authority.

This was not entirely unexpected. Erdogan had for some years begun to act in a more overtly authoritarian fashion. The decline began with the Gezi Park protests of mid-2013 and the serious corruption allegations against Erdogan and his family which surfaced in December 2013.  

In August 2014 Erdogan had transitioned from the office of prime minister, where he had substantial formal authority, to the office of president, where his formal authority was largely symbolic and insubstantial. From the outset he made it clear that he intended to push through a constitutional referendum that would confer upon the office of president extensive executive authority. Achieving this required the AKP to perform strongly in the 2015 general election, held in June.

Despite Erdogan’s creeping authoritarianism, as recently as these elections, most observers inside and outside of Turkey were optimistic that Turkey’s democratic cultural institutions would overcome the turbulence caused by one man’s ambitions, and would self-correct.

Unfortunately for Erdogan – and, it turned out, Turkey – the June 2015 election results saw the AKP losing support and dropping to just 40% of the popular vote, whilst at the same time the HDP Kurdish party finally crossed the 10% threshold required to take seats in parliament.

Tensions between the government and the large Kurdish minority were already high. On June 5th, just two days before the election, four people were killed and dozens injured when twin bomb blasts rocked a HDP election rally in Diyarbakir in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast. No actor claimed credit for the attacks but suspicions fell on both the PKK and ISIS. The next day, a young Kurd, Orhan Gonder, was arrested. He was from the southern Turkish town of Adiyaman, less than 200 km north of the ISIS capital of Raqqa. Later reports confirmed that he, like many in Adiyaman, had been recruited by ISIS, and, after spending months with terrorist group in Syria, had been sent back to carry out the bombing of the HDP rally. Erdogan responded to the provocation of the Diyarbakir attack by resuming hostilities against the PKK, as ISIS had hoped that he would do. The resumption of open violence between the Republic and the Kurdistan workers party (PKK) was a clear harbinger of trouble to come.

When a coalition government couldn’t be formed – this “failure” was demanded by Erdogan – snap parliamentary elections were set for November 1st, 2015. This vote was marred by irregularities and threats to free expression. The results, however, were very mixed for the AKP government. On the one hand, it succeeded in getting its popular vote back to almost 50%, where it had been at the height of its powers. On the other hand, the HDP, which the government accused of being closely linked with the PKK, managed to remain above the 10% threshold required to keep its parliamentarians in office. This meant that the path to a referendum that would confer upon Erdogan true executive powers continued to be blocked. It is not surprising then that the first half of 2016 witnessed a steady slide towards authoritarianism, with major media outlets such as Zaman newspaper and Samanyolu television being seized by the government, while trustees were being assigned to schools and businesses. Many of the media outlets and schools were supposedly linked to the Hizmet movement, inspired by Fethullah Gülen, which Erdogan accused of trying to overthrow his government even before the coup attempt. By now it was very clear the Turkish democracy was ailing as Erdogan was determined to let nothing stop on his way. The crackdown on schools and businesses linked to the Gülen Hizmet movement surprised outside observers who simplistically described Gülen as “a former ally” of Erdogan sympathetic to his Islamist politics. In reality, Gülen was never close to Erdogan and resisted Erdogan’s attempts to co-opt his support. He also rejected Islamism and advocated democracy as being more true to Islamic values.

Erdogan recognized that the Hizmet was far and away Turkey’s largest civil society movement and that respect for Gülen’s religious authority unparalleled. He was desperate for Gülen’s public support but knew that Gülen’s sufistic, apolitical orientation was at odds with his own fundamentalist, Islamist convictions. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s AKP attracted many of the same small-town conservative, religious Turks that were drawn to the Hizmet. And throughout its first decade of the AKP government benefited from strong support from the broader Hizmet community, who saw in it Turkey’s best hope for reform as well as respect for religious values.

The simmering tensions between the Hizmet and the AKP, which finally erupted in 2013 with the Gezi Park protests, came not from the grass-roots but from the highly educated intellectuals who served in Hizmet-linked universities, civil society organizations and media outlets. For ten years, they had uncritically promoted the AKP government but slowly came to recognize that it fell short of the commitment to clean government and democratic reform that they had projected on to it. As they began to speak out tensions gave way to open confrontation.

At the end of 2013 Erdogan was rocked by a ten-billion-dollar “gas for gold” scandal. On December 17, whilst the prime minister was on a state visit to Pakistan, 52 colleagues and associates were arrested, accused of assisting Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab in exchanging Iranian natural gas with gold bullion, in contravention of international sanctions. Four days later 14 further arrests were made and eventually a total of 91 were taken into detention. Prime Minister Erdogan, already smarting from critical reporting over the Gezi Park protests, was incensed by “treasonous” reporting on the corruption investigations by Zaman and Samanyolu. He responded by declaring the corruption investigation to be a “judicial coup” and ordered the issuing of government decree on January 7 that saw 350 investigating police officers purged. He accused Fethullah Gülen and “international conspirators” of being a nefarious plot to destabilize his government.

Subsequent allegations of supplying weapons to Jihadi fighters in Syria and of buying ISIS oil were also met with harsh crackdowns on the media outlets and journalists responsible. In 2015 it was the secular Cumhuriyet (Republic) newspaper that broke the news of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT being involved in the supply of weapons to Jihadi militia in Syria.

Even without the “gift from God” that was the July 15th coup-attempt, President Erdogan had no trouble steadily consolidating his power. His Western allies, though deeply concerned, had little choice but to watch on quietly and say little. The Turkish military, after all, was the second largest military in the NATO alliance – and this alliance was facing one of its greatest challenges in modern times, as it dealt with the horror of the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey was viewed as an important bulwark against the terrorist group.

This conflict, of course, not only saw hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but five million Syrians forced out of their homes. Turkey, to its credit, accommodated almost three million of these refugees. Nevertheless, many sought to find asylum in Europe, and Turkey became the key to regulating the flow of asylum seekers flooding across the continent.

At the same time, Russia, which had severed ties with Turkey over the shooting down of a Sukhoi Su-24M ground attack jet, by Turkish F16s above the Turkish-Syrian border on the 24th of November 2015, had begun to make overtures of rapprochement. In the wake of the July 15th coup attempt, Vladimir Putin reached out to Erdogan offering solidarity and practical friendship in the midst of trials. Suddenly, the prospect of Turkey turning its back upon Europe and the West became an immediate reality. The fact that most of the long serving Turkish generals working in NATO headquarters became victims of the purge along with fellow Western orientated generals back at home raises the real possibility that Turkey might even withdraw from NATO.

Given this precarious predicament, Turkey’s Western allies have been mostly muted in their criticism of the developments in Turkey – doing their utmost to keep the NATO alliance intact and to prevent everything from unravelling. By November, however, even this dynamic was not sufficient to mute the expressions of deep concern. The scale and nature of the purge was such that European officials began to draw parallels between what was happening in Turkey in 2016 and what had happened in Germany 80 years earlier.

When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) transitioned into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Erdogan chose to turn a blind eye to the thousands of foreign terror fighters flooding through Turkey into Syria, believing that support for ISIS and other radical Islamist militia was the lesser of the evils so long as Bashar al-Assad, his erstwhile friend, refused to take his advice and step aside.

Under strong pressure from NATO partners, Turkey reversed its position in early 2015 and began to strongly oppose ISIS. Then, in mid-2016, Turkey swung again and aligned with Russia against the Salafi Jihadi militia in East Aleppo. This development in the second half of last year angered many in Turkey and appears to have been the motivation behind the December 19th assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey by a young police officer who reportedly had strong connections to Erdogan’s AKP party and had worked on numerous occasions in the president’s security detail. The incongruity of this is partly explained by the fact that even as Erdogan turned away from supporting Islamist extremists in Syria, he continued to use the rhetoric of Islamist extremism to bolster domestic support against those he accused of being behind the attempted coup.

This shooting wasn’t the only attack, as the last year has seen dozens of shootings and bombings committed by both ISIS and the PKK. Such attacks have been more frequent due to the shakeups in the Turkish military and police forces. The practical implication of these crackdowns has been that just as Turkey faces its severest challenges from both Kurdish and Islamist terrorist networks, it is at its weakest point in terms of capacity for counterterrorism.

This goes some way to explaining how the gunmen at the Reina nightclub was able to not only shoot his way into the club and murder dozens, but was then able to make his escape and disappear before being confronted by police. The ruthless efficiency of this killing spree meant that he was in-and-out in 10 minutes. It suggests that the gunman likely had backup support and almost certainly had combat experience.

On this occasion, and during the nine attacks previously thought to have been the work of ISIS, the primary victims were not from the more religious half of Turkish society that strongly supports AKP and Erdogan. Indeed, the first attack in June 2015 was on ethnic Kurds campaigning for the June elections and appears to have been designed to restart open conflict with the PKK.

There is every indication that Erdogan will use this latest attack to justify his demand to be given strong executive powers. The media blackout that came immediately after this and previous attacks suggests that he would rather not confront the problem of radical Islamism. But if he thinks that ISIS can be contained and controlled, then he, and Turkey, are in for a year of further nasty surprises. The sad reality in Turkey today is that the collapse of democratic good-governance has made Turkey more vulnerable than ever to threats that even strong democracies struggle to contain.

After the attempted putsch on July 15, 2016, Erdoğan’s government lost no time in blaming Hizmet, even though Gülen himself vehemently denies any involvement, declaring that those actually behind the events “committed treason against the unity of their country” and “caused hundreds of thousands of innocent people to suffer under the government’s oppressive treatment.” Immediately afterwards, Erdogan began to accelerate his course of harassment, detaining and arresting thousands in a sweep termed the “Purge.” The ensuing fear has increased societal divisiveness and paranoia. Amidst the chaos, Erdogan continues to posture as “Savior of Besieged Turkey.”

Safiye described the situation: “There is no law in Turkey, they are just putting people into jail.” Although traumatized, she and her husband are among the fortunate who left in time—thousands of passports of those currently trying to flee have been revoked by the Turkish government. The couple will now apply for asylum, and try to rebuild their disrupted lives in the United States, although how they will do so is unclear. While I have interviewed over twenty Turkish refugees, here I focus chiefly on Safiye and a few others. This article sheds light on the plight of Hizmet-affiliated Turkish refugees, and seeks to explain why and how they left, and what they will now do in their place of refuge. Those fleeing repressive regimes, whose lives have been upended by political events beyond their control, deserve to have their stories known.

Why Hizmet participants fled Turkey
The rift and government repression before July 15, 2016

Erdoğan’s AKP government is oppressing the Hizmet movement today, but both appeared to be allies of convenience for around ten years. In part, this was because both groups promoted freedom of religion in the public arena. Having suffering under decades of an aggressive form of secularism, supported by previous governments ever since Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic in 1923, the two parties found common cause in freedom of faith. Atatürk’s form of secularism strictly relegated piety to the home or mosque, and discriminated against the overtly pious, such as women wearing headscarves. However, the relationship between Gülen and Erdogan took an ugly turn after a series of events, beginning with Hizmet participants’ escalating dismay at the brutal way Erdogan handled the 2013 Gezi Park protestors, and his government’s connection to a corruption scandal involving smuggling gold to Iran to pay for Turkey’s fuel. Because Erdogan believed that Hizmet participants were directly involved in bringing that 2013 graft scandal to light, he angrily closed schools and tutoring centers linked to the movement, and began to arrest members of the judiciary and police whom he believed were Hizmet-affiliated and had exposed the scheme.

Part of Erdogan’s strategy to consolidate power has involved closing or taking over a number of media institutions and closing thousands of “college prep” schools, even those in disadvantaged areas, such as Kurdish regions in southeast Turkey. His government, run by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), also began to arbitrarily arrest and seize the assets of those perceived in any way as a challenge to his control of Turkey, including judges, educators, and businessmen. Those involved in the Hizmet movement and the Kurdish community are his primary targets, but his reach has gone beyond those two groups.

The Hizmet movement has focused much of its energy establishing and operating these educational institutions, which has left affiliated teachers, students, and their families acutely vulnerable to the government’s hostile focus. Safiye pointed out that before the rift, those supporting the AKP had also put their children in Hizmet schools. She insisted, “They [AKP supporters] know us, they used to know us very well, more than others in the rest of Turkey.” Yet in 2015, the government had the Ankara police department’s anti-terrorism units invade Hizmet-affiliated schools in Ankara as they had done elsewhere. She described the scene: “They tore the upholstery off of the sofa. We don’t even smoke, no one smokes in our schools. They were looking for drugs. They did terrible things. They brought 200 police to one single school.”

Similarly, Fatih, a single 26 year-old teacher, described three years of school inspections, as frequent as once a week. He explained, “The students were always scared by the black cars; they were scared the inspectors would close the school.” According to Fatih, these inspectors were seeking to find the smallest of infractions so they could shut the schools, but this widespread tactic, which began after the rift, also reflects a pattern of intimidation against the movement. Others told me similar stories—in several cases, these schools were raided by soldiers carrying machine guns during school hours, terrifying the children.

This pattern of overt harassment also extended to the media. After the November 2015 elections, the emboldened government began to take extreme measures. In March, 2016, it assumed control of Hizmet-run Zaman Newspaper, and later raided Koza-İpek, one of the major media corporations supporting Hizmet. Opposition television and radio syndicates were closed down or taken over (Hizmet-affiliated and otherwise), and by late October 2016, over 160 media outlets had been closed or taken over by the government. This number includes fifteen that were closed on October 29 alone. These were mainly Kurdish media outlets, found in southeast Turkey.

Erdogan also began arresting hundreds of Hizmet-affiliated bureaucrats, government employees, and businessmen in Turkey, in his effort to quash what he alternatively termed, as part of his smear campaign, “the parallel state” or the “Gülenist terror group.” By April, 2016, 2,261 participants had been detained, and 501 arrested.” These events led many in the movement to fear for their physical safety and the future of Hizmet in Turkey. Those that could afford to leave, fearing imminent arrest, fled Turkey for other countries, even before the events of July 15.

After the Coup Attempt: The Purge

Unduly condemned for attempting to overthrow the government, Hizmet participants’ situation rapidly deteriorated after the failed coup. Erdogan declared a state of emergency and decreed a three-month suspension of the European Convention of Human Rights, which he later prolonged for another three months (thus far). Doing so, he removed human rights safeguards, allowing his government to take actions against civilians that otherwise would be illegal in Turkey. His government has fired over 100,000 people, detained over 75 thousand, and arrested over 35 thousand. While many of those targeted are connected in some way to the movement, Erdogan’s scope has included anyone perceived as opposing his government. According to Human Rights Watch, many in jail have been subject to torture by the Turkish police. Detainees report being raped and sexually abused, held in stress positions, deprived of sleep, and beaten. Those suffering these forms of abuse will not find justice any time soon: government officials taking part in the torture have been absolved of responsibility by decrees released during the State of Emergency, even though international law clearly prohibits torture. Even in the unlikely case that some clandestine faction of the movement were eventually found culpable of the plot, this would not justify the government’s arrest and torture of those uninvolved Hizmet participants.

Those not arrested have found their lives disrupted in other ways. Over two thousand educational institutes were abruptly closed or taken over, leaving thousands of students in the lurch, having to find new institutions or unable to complete their degrees. Labeled “terrorists,” Hizmet participants find themselves treated as if they were radioactive by the larger Turkish society, and sometimes even by their neighbors, friends, and family members. Weary yet indignant, Safiye stated, “Everyone knows we are not guilty or terrorists. I haven’t ever used a weapon. The only time I have used a knife is in the kitchen.” In the fearful aftermath of the coup attempt, even those who might privately defend Hizmet, cannot do so publicly without fear of reprisal—or even worse, they might then find that others now associate them with the movement.

Conspiracy theories abound regarding who actually masterminded the events of July 15, but as of yet, the question has not been resolved. Observers of Turkish politics have noted that other possible architects include Erdogan himself, the secular ultranationalists, or an unknown anti-government alliance. Nevertheless, those minimally connected with Hizmet find themselves stigmatized and under a cloud of suspicion. Despite their ostensibly profound commitment to altruism, Hizmet members find themselves the brunt of bigotry, painfully ostracized, and alone.

In fact, they are not completely alone. Kurds, who make up 18% of Turkey’s population, have also felt the sting of his attacks in a number of ways, and the Purge also victimizes the Kurdish community. Only a small minority of Kurds belong to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has carried out terror attacks on Turkish soil towards the goal of an independent Kurdish state. Yet the larger Kurdish community, which has suffered decades of oppression in Turkey, is unfairly associated with PKK violence. Erdogan capitalizes on nationalist anti-Kurdish sentiment in Turkey, gaining support through his tough rhetoric and military attacks against the Kurds (not just the PKK); current social divisiveness has heightened xenophobia in Turkey. While many Kurds nonetheless support Erdogan’s AK Party, others belong to the pro-Kurdish HDP (The Peoples’ Democratic Party), which is fiercely critical of the government (but not militant). On November 4, 2016, the government arrested Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdag, co-leaders of the HDP, as part of a terrorism investigation. The HDP is the third largest political party in Turkey and unconnected to PKK terrorism—this move appears to be part of the president’s policy of muzzling dissent.

How They Fled

Many of those interviewed left because they feared impending arrest, and some left immediately after hearing that colleagues had been thrown in jail. Those with sizable wealth were more easily able to purchase tickets to move abroad, although some reported having to sell homes or businesses at a fraction of their worth, in order to liquidate assets. Those in the middle class told me they sold items such as their cars or laptops just to buy airfare. For example, Safiye explained that her husband had to give up his property to leave. She said, “He sold the house and car, and came to Seattle and waited for me. He said, ‘you’ll come to the US, and we’ll see how it goes.’ Unfortunately, other plans [the coup] happened.”

Fatih described becoming increasingly anxious about the political situation, and said, “I just got onto a plane and left with only two thousand dollars.” He was fortunate to have been able to leave, as was Safiye’s family. Soon after the attempted coup, the government revoked the passports of over 50,000 Turkish citizens to prevent them from immigrating.

Starting All Over

Almost all of the refugee families with whom I spoke planned to apply for political asylum, and then to open a business in the United States, even when they had no business experience. Some also related a desire to pursue academic degrees. While many speak some English, most will have to spend time sharpening their English language skills to be able find employment. I asked Safiye and her husband, Atilla, what they planned to do here if their asylum bid were successful. Safiye dreams of pursuing a Master’s degree in psychology, but for now would settle with opening a small shop. She laughed suddenly, overwhelmed, and said, “I don’t know, I can’t think.”

Her husband, Atilla, also plans to open a business. I asked him how he would do that, and his eyes got red and teary, and he abruptly walked away from the interview to compose himself. When he returned, he admitted he did not yet know how he would do that, having spent his life in the field of education. He explained, “Now we are zero. How can we start from zero? We will try to get to one. We will try to be an individual of the US. I want to be a good citizen of the US. We can’t leave here illegally. If we want to live here, we have to do everything by the law.”

A few asylum-seekers were too traumatized to think that far ahead, and might need to cope with their grief before trying to make a plan. Refugees are dealing with pain and guilt about loved ones at home, some of whom have been arrested before or during the Purge. The shock of having to leave their homes to escape before being detained, in some cases with little warning, left some refugees reeling. Fatih explained, “I can’t get stressed out. If I do, I get headaches and hair loss. I went to the doctor and he said, ‘do not get stressed.’ Here I am a nothing, I have no value. I don’t have a working permit. I don’t have plans about life. I can’t see my future, I can’t see in front of myself. I’m 26 years old, I’m educated, but here I’m nothing, I’m not a teacher.” Clearly, time and support are needed for him to recover and make a new life.

Providing Assistance

Any expression or action of support on the part of Americans for Turkish refugees is deeply appreciated and needed, especially in the current climate. After the 2016 presidential election, many Muslims in the United States are terrified that president-elect Donald Trump will carry out his threat to ban or deport Muslims, and that some of the Islamophobic statements he has made will embolden others to bully or intimidate Muslims. Of particular concern is the recent spike in attacks against Muslim women in America, whose headscarves make them particularly identifiable. That being said, in general, the recent wave of Muslim refugees arriving from places of political conflict (Syria, Yemen, Turkey) are even more acutely vulnerable than American Muslims with US citizenship. Safiye and her family, for example worry about receiving asylum, being seen favorably by other Americans, and having their daughter accepted—and not bullied—in her new school. Meanwhile, they also worry about finding permanent housing, employment, and friends with whom to create a new community.

Americans can help in a number of ways. They can offer to be allies and stand against Islamophobic bullying. They can assist in finding employment and housing, even by simply offering advice or contacts. They can donate to associations that aid refugees such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) or the United Nations High Committee for Refugees (UNHCR). Even the simple altruistic gesture of offering a neighboring refugee a friendly cup of tea or coffee, goes far in making someone who suddenly finds him or herself in an unfamiliar environment, dispirited, alone, and disoriented, better able to cope.

Conclusion

Safiye’s family, like Fatih and many others, narrowly escaped being arrested for their association with the Hizmet movement. Despite choosing a career as a teacher in order to help others, Safiye finds herself rejected by her own motherland. She laughed bitterly at the end of her story, and told me that to her, a homeland is the place that provides for its citizens’ wellbeing. “Turkey doesn’t give us that,” she added, and stated, “if a country or a nation does not give you food, water, security, it is not your nation anymore.” Others I interviewed echoed her sentiment, and are resigned to settling abroad, perhaps permanently. Victims of Erdogan’s attempts to silence all opposition in Turkey, they now have to find their way in exile.