The social scientists' FETÖ test

We said that FETÖ is also a serious sociological phenomenon, with the social segments it rests upon or influences. It was precisely this dimension that drew the interest of a number of academics for years. Even so, no social science literature proportionate to its extent and influence has formed about the movement, which naturally drew the attention of social scientists as a civil society movement, an education-volunteer movement and later a corporatist social power movement that laid hands on every field and tried to organize every field.

One of the most important reasons for this is the movement's excessive meddling in determining the tendencies, direction and content of the literature about itself

. This level of meddling has caused almost all of the literature that has appeared on Gülen, with very few exceptions, to turn into what is practically a eulogy of Gülen.

Some of these studies were financed entirely by FETÖ, and in some others the researchers were misled by the excessive care the Gülenists displayed in appearing very different from what they are and, of course, as they wished to appear.

Şerif Mardin

had once expressed in the same way this difficulty he faced in studying the Gülen movement. According to him, the people belonging to the movement did not leave a sociological researcher alone, did not open themselves up, and, instead of truly expressing what they thought on any subject, gave priority to visibly manipulating the researcher.

Admittedly, this manipulative attitude must surely also give a social scientist an important impression about understanding the movement,

but it is also a fact that it has created serious difficulty in doing the sociology of a social body whose numbers exceed a million.

For that reason, many social science studies produced on this subject had to lose their validity entirely once the movement manifested itself as FETÖ.

Because in these studies the movement had succeeded in reflecting itself entirely as it wanted to market itself to the world: as a movement of tolerance, dialogue, a non-political civil society and volunteerism.

Those who did those academic studies, having seen that this movement, let alone tolerance and dialogue, bears not the slightest tolerance toward anyone other than itself, that even if there is a dimension of volunteerism it has no civil side whatsoever, that it is a movement utterly power-oriented and organized in extreme discipline like a military intelligence organization, are today forced to throw their observations or findings about the movement into the trash. In contrast to the emphases on the movement's civility and volunteerism ordered by the movement itself,

what feeling does it put social scientists in to face the strongest mafia and criminal organization that can be encountered in Europe and the world?

The Japanese-descended American social scientist who declared the End of History in the early nineties,

F. Fukuyama,

had treated the relations of trust produced by civil society, solidarity and social organization as social capital.

Social capital is one of the most important sources of a society's strength.

When he explained that the organization of civil society in a society is generally very good, certain people in particular had faced the question of how the problem of these civil society organizations' cadre-building within the state could be coped with. Fukuyama, who takes American society as the basis of his analyses,

had said that he was aware of such a problem and that it was an illusion that even the cadre-building of civil society organizations or religious communities in state institutions threatens society.

Truly, we can say that

Fukuyuama

was unaware of FETÖ's performance with what it did after December 17 and subsequently July 15.

In fact, perhaps if he had been a little more informed about FETÖ's performance on July 15 and December 17, he would probably have seen that some FETÖ-style community structures had already long since taken America over

. How little effect do the manipulations of the lobbies that steer foreign policy, which put their own interests ahead of American interests, have in the self-harming fragmentation and inconsistency in America's foreign policy today? Who can say today that America pursues a consistent and self-serving policy in the Middle East?

America as it is today has in fact died, and no one is reciting the funeral prayer. Otherwise, do you suppose that America, which increases its enemies every day and multiplies the hatred directed at itself, is doing all of this to itself?

How many organizations working like FETÖ do you think there are that operate within the US and steer US foreign policy and domestic policy? Under the influence of which Jewish lobby was the 38 billion dollar allocation that Obama approved for Israel in recent days, in a way that will provoke a fierce wave of hatred against the US in the Middle East, made?

In fact, with these, FETÖ, which has been much in the news lately, set about applying in Turkey all the habits and wits it picked up from these lobbies in America

. Even though its insidious activities and intentions inside Turkey have been exposed, it continues to advance along this path inside America, and the American system is seriously unprotected, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, against such structures within state institutions.

While we are speaking of FETÖ's closedness, which also misled the academic world, and of the difficulty of studying it scientifically, how the subject has come to the matter of the security of the US as well!

The new form FETÖ has taken thus seems eager to constantly drag the subject toward security. In contrast to the media that is ready to buy Gülen's image, who still continues to give the world the appearance of a respectable cleric, we shall see whether he will be able to continue the same PR for academic circles, which require a bit more care.