Today, this question takes precedence in Turkish politics: What will New Turkey be like? In today’s Turkey there are two key political actors who have extraordinary potential to enact change. Any foreign reader, politician or intellectual who wants to understand the New Turkey has to grasp these two actors' mindsets. All other analyses on Turkey are bound to be futile and meaningless.
The first actor is the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The second is "The Service," a movement under the leadership of Fethullah Gulen, a man of religion currently living in the US. This Islamic movement calling itself The Service is known in Western circles as the Gulen Movement. In Turkish media it is called “Cemaat,” meaning the Community or Congregation. The Gulenists don’t like the label “Cemaat,” though it is very much in vogue in Turkey.
Why is the second most prominent political actor of New Turkey, after the AKP, an Islamic faith community, not another political party? Why are Western journalists and academics specializing on Turkey trying to determine Fethullah Gulen's views in Pennsylvania instead of the main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu? Some experts go as far as saying that Erdogan’s strongest rival is Gulen. There are many academics who insist that the struggle for political power in Turkey is between the Erdogan government and the Gulen Movement. If we accept what these experts say as valid, a bizarre and absurd New Turkey is in the cards. How is it possible in a civilized country, where one assumes power through democratic means via free elections, that the rival of a political party is a religious community? Shouldn’t it be a contest between political parties to become the ruling political power of the land? Isn’t any other contest illegitimate in terms of democracy?
In short, during the transition from Old Turkey to New Turkey, there is a grotesque, hard-to-decipher view of Turkey. Over the past few weeks, the most discussed issue in Turkey has been Erdogan-Gulen relations. It started with articles from both sides criticizing each other in rival newspapers close to Gulen and Erdogan. Polemics grew. Then, the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV), an organ of the Gulen Movement, issued an 11-article communiqué full of strong innuendos against the Erdogan government. It said that Gulenists were being purged from the Turkish bureaucracy and judiciary.
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