The game against Hizmet
“The game” in my headline refers to two separate things. The first one is football, which is indeed the game in today’s world, and the other is the game which is being played at the expense of the Hizmet movement. A campaign of psychological warfare has been launched against Hizmet, propagating that Hizmet is trying to bring down the Fenerbahçe Football Club without even a shred of evidence or any plausible explanation.
There is now a court case pending against a number of Fenerbahçe administrators, accusing them match rigging, etc. Some groups in Turkey have convinced a number of Fenerbahçe fans that Hizmet people within the judiciary and police are behind this plot and that they want to get rid of the current chairman of the club, Aziz Yıldırım, and take the club down. There are now not only many fanatical fans who believe this but also some renowned columnists who wrote about the issue openly in their columns and on Twitter. They cannot come up with any evidence or plausible explanations, but, based on a fear-mongering tactic of “they are everywhere,” are trying to create a certain perception.
In this regard, Hizmet people might be the “Jews” of Turkey and in the future these people might even be persecuted as a result of pure fabricated legends. We cannot know people’s intentions, but people in responsible positions must double-check their actions to see if and to what extent their declarations, statements, accusations, columns and tweets, knowingly or unknowingly, feed into this potentially monstrous and cruel public sentiment against Hizmet people, who are just ordinary individuals but accused of being sinister people, without any shred of evidence.
When it comes to Fenerbahçe, the very people who make accusations against the Hizmet movement keep saying the evidence against Fenerbahçe is weak. But when it comes to Hizmet, they imply that there is no need for evidence, as everyone knows about it. However, what does everyone know?
I do not think that this is just an issue regarding Fenerbahçe. Increasingly, every incident is being compared to the Hizmet movement by some quarters. When a number of mishaps took place in the university exams, some pointed fingers at Hizmet, without any evidence. Millions of people were confused about the matter. In state civil servant entry exams, similar things happened. While it was obvious that there are some gangs financially benefitting from these frauds, those groups were disregarded and the Hizmet movement was blamed instead. Funnily, some culprits who were caught red-handed even protested their innocence and blamed Hizmet instead.
I would be very much surprised if there is not a big brain behind this psychological war against the Hizmet movement, and if all these attacks are not coordinated. The Hizmet movement has been working towards democratization in Turkey, has been a staunch supporter of the European Union accession process and a champion of transparency in Turkey. Without its support on these issues, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government could not be successful and could not respond to Ergenekon.
Many privileged people, groups, individuals, institutions and so on are losing their undeserved privileges and they simply hate the Hizmet movement for its contribution. Now, there are even some liberal intellectuals who feel they are losing their privileged position of defending human rights and freedoms in Turkey and they resent the Hizmet movement as being ungrateful towards them or not exactly obeying their discourse, such as on the Kurdish issue. They simply want to be recorded in history as heroes and naively sympathize with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) views, and are upset with the Hizmet movement for not following them blindly.
Thus, sometimes strange things happen and you could see an anti-Ergenekon liberal advocating a pro-Ergenekon view for purely selfish reasons.
- Created on .