“If this is called a witch hunt, then yes, we perform a witch hunt,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a May 10 “consultation and assessment meeting” of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). He was referring to the purge and reshuffling within the Turkish judiciary and police with the clear aim of dismantling the “parallel state” allegedly formed by the Fethullah Gulen movement. “In order to sterilize this dirty water that contaminated the milk, we will either boil or molecularize it,” Erdogan added, using a biological reference to justify an operation on state and society.
Students of political history will probably note that these are not healthy signs for any country, and Erdogan’s self-acknowledged “witch hunt” deserves a closer look. It also begs revisiting popular political concepts within Islam, because both the Erdogan government and the Gulen movement are self-declared Islamic actors.