11 - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN
STANDS TURKEY
I reproduce below an
article by Jennifer Campbell, editor of «Diplomat & International Canada», a magazine established
in Ottawa, in 1989. She writes that the Canada Gülen organization sponsored her
visit to Athens in order to write the article below, published in the magazine's issue of
October-November 2018.
Having been myself for some years a follower of the Fethullah Gülen organization in Ottawa and having published some articles and contributions in books on Gülen, as a professor of Geopolitics and International Relations at the University of Ottawa since 1970, as well as a specialist of Turkey and being myself a Greek, being well known in Greece and Turkey to have uttered the sentence, «The best Greeks are the Turks», I would like to give here some further information on the relations between these two eminent Turks.
Both have repeatedly
expressed their admiration for late president of Turkey, Turgut Özal, who
considered me, in his own words, his «spiritual father» in pursuing the dream
of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. Even though Gülen is pro-Jewish as Sufi Muslim
and Erdoğan is anti-Jewish as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood there are both
supporters of the multi-religious structure of the late Ottoman Empire. Özal`s
father was an Orthodox Christian Armenian and his mother was a Kurdish
Nakshibendi Sufi. Erdoğan and Gülen are both supporters of the Greek
Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul.
Since the coming to
power of Erdoğan, in 2003, himself as well as his supporters, in the Turkish population
were Gülenists and pro-American. Only, after the 2016 July military coup in Turkey, engineered by the
alleged previous American administration of President Obama, did Erdoğan accuse Gülen and his supporters of
wanting to replace him by Gülen himself as a Turkish Khomeini. The result was
understandable. Erdoğan was hit like a bull in a Spanish bullfight arena
and persuaded that the bullfighter was Gülen himself under American
instructions, he cracked down on his former self and supporters. A sheer
tragedy in which the West with its hypocritical human rights should abstain from
taking sides.
So what about me?
Should I choose between my two favorite men? We Greeks are presently favorably impressed
by the seemingly independent policy of President Erdoğan towards Great Powers,
as all third nations victimized by the West would be. Because above NATO and
Russia, stands our Turkish brother and the Greek public thinks Turkey`s seemingly
aggressive policy against Greece is directed by Great Power interests. Above
Gülen and Erdoğan I choose my
dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. In 1934, Venizelos just 12 years after
the catastrophical defeat of his country by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, proposed in a memorable letter to the Nobel Price organizers that they should give the Peace Nobel Price to
his latter former foe!
Dimitri Kitsikis,
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 28-X- 2018, www.idkf.gr
