Aug 5, 2016

ISTANBUL — Clues about who may have been behind the coup attempt in Turkey increasingly point to US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen and his network of supporters. Yet the big picture will remain blurred until the movement’s anti-Iran stance, too often neglected, is considered.

Gulen’s anti-Iran posture is first and foremost rooted in ideology, as he hails from a tradition that views political Shiism as a threat. In a 1997 interview with Yeni Yuzyil, Gulen clearly laid out this tendency when he criticized “the export of a sect and fanatical Islamic understanding in the name of religion and Islamic revolution,” adding that the Iranians “uphold their own sect and interpretations before the true religion.” Gulen also pointed to “Persian expansionism in the region” while referring to Iran’s “historic rivalry with [Turkey]” as a “certain danger.”

Gulenists have over the years used Iranophobia as a tool in their power struggle with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Turkish intelligence (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan, a close confidant of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been a major target, chiefly over the peace talks with the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Gulen views the PKK as a threat to his network’s existence, especially in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast. As such, the first clash between Gulen and then-Prime Minister Erdogan — perhaps unsurprisingly — emerged over the Kurdish question in February 2012.

Fidan was called to give testimony on the so-called Oslo negotiations, the first series of talks between the MIT and the PKK in 2008-2009 that eventually led to the now collapsed peace process. Upon Erdogan’s advice, Fidan chose not to testify, since part of the probe was led by a prosecutor with alleged Gulenist links. Of note, the prosecutor later fled Turkey after being suspended over those links.

From this point onward, Gulen-affiliated media outlets began to openly target Iran. These efforts included allegations that Tehran supports the PKK, prompting the Iranian ambassador to Ankara to write a letter to Zaman in protest. The Gulen-linked press extensively circulated a 2013 Washington Post article that alleged that Fidan had handed over to Tehran the names of 10 Iranians who were working with Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Fidan was also accused of having contacted an “Iranian agent” in the clandestine Gulenist-led “Selam-Tevhid” investigation in 2010-2014 that centered on an allegedly Iran-linked militant group active in the 1990s. In 2014, a prosecutor ordered the detention of those in charge of this probe, arguing that the case was essentially reinvented to justify a wiretapping scheme. Police officers linked to Gulen were accused of having wiretapped 2,500 figures for more than three years as part of this operation — including members of Turkish Shiite associations, journalists, ministers, MIT and even Erdogan. The prosecutor’s indictment, which was completed earlier this year, implicated Gulen-linked police chiefs, prosecutors and judges and labeled the whole thing a “conspiracy.” It further claimed that the target was not just the Kurdish peace process, but interestingly, also the 2010 nuclear fuel swap initiative with Iran that was jointly led by Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.