Turkish court issues arrest warrant for Fethullah Gülen
An İstanbul court has accepted a request by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office to issue an arrest warrant for Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who resides in the United States.
The 1st İstanbul Penal Court of Peace decided there was "sufficient tangible evidence" against Gülen and agreed to issue the warrant. The move would be a prelude to a formal request for Gülen's extradition from the United States, where he is living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
İstanbul Public Prosecutor Hasan Yılmaz, who is supervising an investigation that put Zaman daily Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı and dozens of others into jail, issued an arrest warrant for Fethullah Gülen as part of the operation that started on Sunday targeting journalists, scriptwriters, producers and police officials.
In his request for a warrant, the prosecutor accused Gülen of heading a criminal gang. The charges include operating an armed terror group, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
"Anyone critical of this government risks facing the same fate," said Abdulhamit Bilici, a columnist for Zaman, a newspaper close to Gülen's movement. "These days it is very easy to be called a traitor."
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Gülen's movement of orchestrating a plot to try to bring it down. It says Gülen's followers within the police and judiciary were behind corruption allegations that forced four ministers to resign and targeted members of Erdoğan's family. Fethullah Gülen denied all the charges.
The US and Turkey do have an extradition treaty and Erdoğan has said previously that he wants Fethullah Gülen extradited.
Alp Aslandoğan, a New York-based Turkish academic and close associate of Gülen, described the accusations against him as ludicrous.
"It's not a surprise except in the sense of how low the Erdogan regime will go for the sake of absolute power and intimidation," Aslandoğan, who leads Alliance of Shared Values, said.
Earlier Friday, the court ordered the arrest of four people and released eight others who had been detained in the raids on Zaman daily and STV network.
The investigation has been widely condemned as a blow against Turkey's free press, drawing criticism from the European Union and the US. Erdoğan has rejected the criticism, saying the investigation is a national security issue.
"I reject the accusations that I am a member of a terror organization and return the accusations to those who have made them," Dumanlı told supporters Friday outside the courthouse in İstanbul. "The media cannot be silenced, the media cannot be intimated. Zaman is not afraid."
The issue of a warrant would take Erdoğan's campaign to root out Fethullah Gülen supporters, including purges of the judiciary and police, to the international arena potentially testing already strained relations with Washington.
Turkish authorities are now free to apply to the United States for extradition, with no guarantee of success. Erdoğan's image in the West, once that of a moderate reformer, has been eroded as his open intolerance of opposition and of criticism has grown.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has said last weekend's police raids to detain journalists and other media workers was contrary to European values. Erdoğan told the bloc to mind its own business.
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