Erdogan, MURIC and Spurious Allegations

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday October 17 flagged off a three-country African diplomatic tour. By Tuesday, October 19, Erdogan is expected in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, with the aim of strengthening relations between Nigeria and his country Turkey. The two leaders will be signing energy deal, as the Turkish President will attend a business forum hosted by Turkey’s Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK).

The news of Erdogan’s coming to Nigerian gladdens our heart the more. Meeting him would have been the greatest opportunity, especially, seeing the great and innovative things he has been doing for his country and the Ummah (Muslim community) in general. The feats earned him the Global Muslim Personality of the Year awards for 3 consecutive years. The recent was held days ago in Lagos.

However, as we work on getting to meet the emerging leader of the Muslim world during his official visit to Nigeria, one of our respected fathers, a human rights activist dropped an opinion piece, on the wee hours of Monday, October 18, with the title: “MURIC to Erdogan: Stop Persecuting Opposition”.

Which Erdogan? Is it the same Erdogan that is loved not only in Turkey but across the Muslim world? The same that is considered as the leader of the emerging Muslim world by Muslims across the globe? Or, has MURIC quickly forgotten the personality called Erdogan, the man who has been using his office to fight against the persecution of Muslims globally, just as MURIC has been doing locally?

By the way, who are the ‘oppositions’ and why is President Erdogan persecuting them? And, why is this false accusation that looks like a sponsored statement coming at this time? All these are questions that jostle our mind, after reading the annoying 824-word release that is lacking in facts! Without mincing words, MURIC’s statement is full of untruths, false allegations, concocted facts, twisted logic and illogical conspiracy theories.

Suggesting that President Erdogan set up a ‘phantom coup’ against himself, and wasted the lives of about 250 of his closest compatriots just to keep himself in power, while attacking key symbols of his own government in a fake coup is utterly unbelievable. To make matters worse, those who MURIC spoke for in the press release, the Hizmet Movement, are themselves implicated in the bloody coup attempt.

The kind of information dished out in the press statement is a disservice to a man who has objectively emerged the Global Muslim Personality of the Year back to back because of his leading role in the Muslim World, daring to speak for the oppressed Muslims of the world in Palestine, Rohingya, Kashmir, among others, when others like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and other Arab countries became deaf and dumb, and kept criminal silence.

In fact, President Erdogan didn’t just defend the Muslims’ rights, he has on different occasions fiercely spoken for the Muslims and Islam in global forums, including UN platforms. He is always in the forefront of condemning the growing hostility to Islam and Muslims in some European countries, particularly France. Hence, writing to attack President Erdogan’s personality at this auspicious moment reveals a carefully orchestrated plan by the Turkish President’s enemies, who unsuspectingly succeeded in using one of our own for the dirty job.

It’s so planned to the extent that the enemies of President Erdogan already knew that apart from the discussion on bilateral relations between Turkey-Nigeria, he would have sought for his Nigerian counterpart’s support in the fight against the Hizmet Movement and requested the transfer of its schools that continue to operate in several parts of Nigeria to the Turkish Maarif Foundation. Hence, they needed someone for the dirty job, who will demonize President Erdogan, few days before his visit to the Presidential Villa in Abuja, initially scheduled for Tuesday, October 19, and the perfect person, to them, is no other person than our own Prof Lakin Akintola of MURIC.

Although, the meeting between President Buhari and President Erdogan might not hold again because the scheduled date (October 19) falls on a public holiday in Nigeria, responding to MURIC is one of the hardest things to do for us, because its Director, Prof. Akintola is arguably one of the leading advocates of Islam and Muslims’ rights in Nigeria. In fact, Prof Akintola emerged runner-up of Nigerian Muslim Personality of the Year 2019, the same year President Erdogan won the Global Muslim Personality of the Year for the second time.

So, is it possible that MURIC was unknowingly used for a yeoman’s job by the enemies of President Erdogan and the good people of Turkey? Or could MURIC has failed to cross-check and do proper investigations of the allegations before it hurriedly went to the press to beat the deadline – perfect timing – coinciding with President Erdogan’s visit to Nigeria.

Going by the spirit and the content of the press release, MURIC evidently speaks for Hizmet movement. According to the first paragraph of the release, the group accused President Erdogan of arbitrary arrest, torture, political killings and long imprisonment, but failed to back the claims with evidence. It’s doubtful if MURIC did a background check of the group it is defending.

What exactly is Hizmet Movement?

According to Muslim News findings, the group is known as Hizmet – service – in Turkey, but its real name, known to the rest of the world is The Gulen Movement, a supposedly Islamic fraternal movement led by Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader and businessman who has lived in self-exile for more than 20 years in the United States of America.

The group also known as Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation (FETO) was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government for its involvement in the bloody coup attempt of July 15, 2016, which left many Turkish citizens who defended their mandate martyred and thousands injured.

Many of the group members in military, civil service, government who aided the coup attempt were apprehended and prosecuted by a Turkish court. In April, 2021, a Turkish court handed down life sentences to eight senior army officers, four retired officers and one Imam – all self-confessed followers of Fethullah Gülen – for participating in the failed coup. It is spurious to castigate President Erdogan for sentences handed down by Turkey’s courts where the accused were given the right to fair hearing.

Were these allegations to be true, the western media that have been criticising Erdogan’s government would have been the first to unleash investigative reports to expose how President Erdogan faked the coup attempt. Sadly, about five years after the unfortunate event being commemorated every July 15 by Turks in different countries, MURIC, led by a respected professor of Islamic Studies is accusing President Erdogan of faking the coup without evidence!

Many commentators have likened the MURIC recent effort to what the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) did when its leader, Nnamdi Kanu wrote Israel, United Nations, alleging that President Buhari is persecuting it’s members, and by extension, the Igbos. Can MURIC come out to say President Buhari is truly persecuting IPOB members, by extension, the Igbos? Yet, he is a supporter and sympathiser of an international terrorist organisation (FETO) and at the same time, critic of a local terrorist organisation (IPOB). Is this not double standard and hypocritical pretence MURIC is accusing President Erdogan of?

Again, the fact that the IPOB members, not Igbos, conduct themselves peacefully in different parts of the world doesn’t stop the fact that IPOB remains a proscribed group in Nigeria. Same as The Gulen in Turkey. As MURIC puts it, they might be peaceful in Nigeria, running educational and humanitarian assistance doesn’t make them a saint at home where they have been indicted for their unholy activities.

The Hizmet movement’s problem didn’t start with Erdogan. It started in 1986, after the 1980 military coup, when the then Turkish ruling generals accused the leader of the Group, Gulen of sedition. He was arrested back then.

According to many media reports, when he fled to the US in 1999, Gulen released a broadcast tape where he urged his followers to infiltrate government institutions. He was later charged in absentia for “forming a terrorist group to undermine the secular state, but was later acquitted. Gulen remains in the US and has since not returned to Turkey because of other subsequent clandestine activities, including his involvement in the 2016 coup. Sadly, the US didn’t see anything wrong with Gulen. They refused to proscribe him, just as they failed to recognize the Nigerian government’s proscription of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

Is Erdogan a tyrant?

It’s not surprising that Erdogan is called a tyrant and undemocratic President of Turkey. This has been an age-long coordinated western media campaign against him. It is however pathetic that a personality like Prof Akintola who is aware of the growing media framing and stereotypes of Muslims in the media could descend so low, and call Erdogan a tyrant?

We would not only tell, but illustrate with a practical example of how President Erdogan earned the hero of democracy during the 2019 Mayoral election. If he is truly “undemocratic” and “tyrannical” as is being insinuated, he would have used his so-called ‘autocratic power’ to change the votes of the election in favour of his AK Party candidate, Binali Yildirim against Ekrem Imamoglu of CHP who eventually won by “the thinnest of margins”, because Istanbul is “the country’s economic engine” and President Erdogan would want to desperately protect it at all cost.

If truly President Erdogan is an autocratic leader, he would have imposed Binali Yildirim – a former Prime Minister and parliamentary speaker, who had the media support controlled by pro-government tycoons. Nobody would have known if the electoral commission had rigged the election but Mr. President, a complete democrat didn’t do just that. Rather, he gave the electoral commission to do their job and the opposition won the election.

Interestingly, ‘wailers’ in the Turkish opposition parties who had in the past called President Erdogan “autocratic” and “tyrant” because they lost in the previous elections quickly changed the tune of the music, saying “democracy won”, just because they won three major cities – Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara, the state capital.

Really, politicians are the same everywhere, including in Nigeria where the ‘wailers’ in the leading opposition party raised no eyebrows in states where their parties won, but were very quick to accuse the ruling party and the electoral commission of complicity where their parties lost, with rallying cries of “democracy is under threats.”

In conclusion, this attempt to vilify President Erdogan is odious and illogical, and as an agenda, it is dead on arrival.