Turkish Court Seeks Arrest of Muslim Leader
August 12, 2000 - 0:0
ANKARA A Turkish court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for the influential leader of one of Turkey's most powerful Islamic groups.
Anatolian News Agency said Ankara State Security Court had granted a request for the arrest of preacher Fethullah Gulen made by hardline secularist Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel.
The prosecutor has been investigating Gulen for suspected breaches of Turkey's strictly secularist laws.
The court's decision is the latest step in a three-year-old Turkish crackdown on Islamic activism which the establishment sees as a threat to the secularist order.
It was Yuksel's second attempt to win a warrant after a lower court rejected his first bid for lack of evidence.
Gulen, thought to be resident in the United States, is the head of the Light Movement, which funds schools in Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia as well as controlling a national newspaper and TV station.
Many secularists suspect that Gulen's mild and spiritual manner conceals an ambition that seeks to overthrow Turkey's secular constitution and replace it with a system based on strict Islamic Sharia Law.
Last year authorities said prosecutors were investigating video tapes that apparently showed Gulen urging supporters in the civil service to lie low and bide their time before moving against the secularist order.
Since secularist pressure forced the downfall of the country's first Islamist-led government in 1997, authorities have jailed scores of Islamist politicians and activists.
They have closed one Islam-based party and now seek the closure of a second under laws that ban mixing politics and religion.
But Gulen has prominent supporters and a wide network of loyal members. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit earlier this year publicly praised Gulen for his movement's work in funding schools and colleges.
The campaign against Islamists this week sparked a row between the government and the president over a decree seeking to fire civil servants suspected of links to Muslim guerrillas of the Hizbollah group.
Police this year have unearthed more than 60 bodies they believe are the victims of a Hizbollah program of assassinations, extortion and kidnapings.
Ecevit last week issued a decree allowing civil servants linked to Hizbollah to be fired. He said there were some 400 such people on the state payroll.
But President Ahmet Necdet Sezer rejected the decree, arguing such a measure should be made in legislation voted by Parliament, not by a government decree.
(Reuter)
Anatolian News Agency said Ankara State Security Court had granted a request for the arrest of preacher Fethullah Gulen made by hardline secularist Prosecutor Nuh Mete Yuksel.
The prosecutor has been investigating Gulen for suspected breaches of Turkey's strictly secularist laws.
The court's decision is the latest step in a three-year-old Turkish crackdown on Islamic activism which the establishment sees as a threat to the secularist order.
It was Yuksel's second attempt to win a warrant after a lower court rejected his first bid for lack of evidence.
Gulen, thought to be resident in the United States, is the head of the Light Movement, which funds schools in Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia as well as controlling a national newspaper and TV station.
Many secularists suspect that Gulen's mild and spiritual manner conceals an ambition that seeks to overthrow Turkey's secular constitution and replace it with a system based on strict Islamic Sharia Law.
Last year authorities said prosecutors were investigating video tapes that apparently showed Gulen urging supporters in the civil service to lie low and bide their time before moving against the secularist order.
Since secularist pressure forced the downfall of the country's first Islamist-led government in 1997, authorities have jailed scores of Islamist politicians and activists.
They have closed one Islam-based party and now seek the closure of a second under laws that ban mixing politics and religion.
But Gulen has prominent supporters and a wide network of loyal members. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit earlier this year publicly praised Gulen for his movement's work in funding schools and colleges.
The campaign against Islamists this week sparked a row between the government and the president over a decree seeking to fire civil servants suspected of links to Muslim guerrillas of the Hizbollah group.
Police this year have unearthed more than 60 bodies they believe are the victims of a Hizbollah program of assassinations, extortion and kidnapings.
Ecevit last week issued a decree allowing civil servants linked to Hizbollah to be fired. He said there were some 400 such people on the state payroll.
But President Ahmet Necdet Sezer rejected the decree, arguing such a measure should be made in legislation voted by Parliament, not by a government decree.
(Reuter)