So, you are against FETÖ?

The indictment before the Ankara No. 2 State Security Court, which accused the defendant of planning to "end the Republic of Turkey, a secular, democratic, and social state of law, and to use the society he would create with the youth whose brains he washed in his schools to establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia laws," was dated August 22, 2000. The defendant in the public case registered under the court's 2000/124 docket number was Fethullah Gülen. 

Fethullah Gülen's sermon, broadcast on certain national television channels on June 18, 1999, was a perfect lesson in infiltration for his disciples, instructing them to protect the positions they had secured in the administration, the judiciary, and the civil and law enforcement bureaucracy, and to conceal themselves until they reached sufficient power:

"The presence of our friends in the judiciary, the civil service, or other vital institutions should not be handled and evaluated as mere individual obligations. That is, these are our guarantees for the future in those units. To march toward the future, discover the key points of the system. This system is still ongoing. Our friends will march toward the future within this system. Therefore, they must know the key points of that system; they must discover them. They must overcome them. This is another aspect of the matter. You will not resort to force where there is no balance of power. In a place where technique and tactics are required, your heart is important. Some will accuse us of cowardice from the outside. If you find the opportunity and continue on your path, you will show that flexibility there as well, use that eccentricity, pretend to be retreating, but you will widen your steps and move forward."

The Ankara No. 2 State Security Court, which characterized the structure headed by Gülen as an illegal terrorist organization aimed at destroying the constitutional secular democratic order, would issue an in-absentia arrest warrant for the defendant at the beginning of the case, which was opened with a request for up to 10 years of heavy imprisonment.

The Gülen case, which began in August 2000 with a request for conviction by the Ankara No. 2 State Security Court and ended in June 2008 with an acquittal verdict unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals General Assembly, is an exemplary snapshot of the astonishing change and transformation Turkey underwent in 8 years:

- The conditional release and postponement regarding crimes committed before April 23, 1999, carried out with the law numbered 4616 (the Rahşan Amnesty) dated December 21, 2000, 

- The removal of Gülen's actions from the scope of terrorism through the amendment made to the definition of terrorism in the Anti-Terror Law numbered 3713 on May 5, 2000, which introduced the requirement of committing a crime and armed action, 

- The approval of the 11th High Criminal Court's acquittal verdict by the 9th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals,

- Upon the objection of the Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, the unanimous upholding of the 9th Criminal Chamber's acquittal verdict by the Supreme Court of Appeals General Assembly of Criminal Chambers!

The 8-year chronology summarized above shows, like a custom-made suit, how FETÖ, during the period when he was Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi (!), was protected and shielded by those in political power, and how it was allowed to wrap around all institutions of the state like a cancerous tumor.

Gülen was a representative of a tradition that rejected the founding philosophy of the Republic, the secular, democratic legal order, contemporary values, the nation-state, and the unitary structure. Among similar structures that had a tissue incompatibility with the gains of October 29, 1923, his path was cleared because he was seen as the most suitable structure to meet the expectations of imperial dynamics from Turkey.  

Have no doubt that when future generations examine the exemplary case file that began with the request for Fethullah Gülen's punishment and ended with his sanctification, they will actually see the political tomography of Turkey's recent past!