The imprisoned pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş wrote that “Erdoğan neither liked Gülen nor his movement,” and added, “He secretly hated Gülen.”
BOLD – Selahattin Demirtaş, a political leader who has been in prison for three years in Turkey, was the co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Demirtaş, with his effective politics, reached out to the various sections of the society for the first time, and he almost doubled the HDP votes along the way.
Demirtaş recently started penning down weekly articles from prison. Yeni Yaşam Daily publishes these articles.
Demirtaş commented on the frequently discussed issue in Turkey, “infiltrating the state” in his last article. The Erdoğan regime has been accusing the Gülen Movement of “trying to conquer the state” for four years and overseeing a crackdown against it. Probes were launched against 500,000 Gülenists, and 180,000 of them were detained.
Demirtaş shared his first analysis of Erdoğan’s war on Gülen. Erdoğan and Gülen have been accused of being partners in the past. According to Demirtaş, Erdoğan never liked Gülen.
Demirtaş’s article read as follows:
“In my opinion, Erdoğan himself never liked Fethullah Gülen and his movement. I will not be exaggerating if I say that Erdoğan hated them secretly because he had to share his power with the Gülen movement. Of course, after a certain point, it was no secret that Gülenists had emotions similar to Erdoğan. Tayyip Erdoğan invited self-exiled Fetullah Gülen to Turkey at an event called the Turkish Olympics organized by the Gülen Movement in 2012 by saying, “We want this yearning to end.” However, this invitation was not actually a friendly call. Anticipating Gülen’s intentions much earlier, Erdoğan tried to bring Gülen to Turkey in order to control him, so this was the reason of that famous call. When I heard Erdoğan’s speech on TV in my parliament room, I thought that way, and I still think so. Erdoğan was left alone regarding the Gülenists after a stage as he could not convince the AKP’s prominent figures. Of course, I am not saying this to ease Erdoğan’s political responsibility. However, this is my comment. To summarize in one sentence, Erdoğan saw Gülen not dangerous for the state, but his power.”
State collapsed
Demirtaş indicated that the state was in the hands of certain minority groups since the founding of the Republic of Turkey, and now, he added, it should end.
According to Demirtaş, the state was captured by the Kemalist elites since the first years of the Republic, and it continued for a long time. Stating that Erdoğan took over the state, Demirtaş says that the democratic, populist, non-participating state collapsed when the state suddenly became under the control of the bossism system.