It has become almost a Turkish tradition now to have a new criminal case every season in which the nation gets bitterly divided. The latest example is the case of “Tahsiyeciler,” or “Annotators,” which is a small Islamist community based in eastern Turkey. More than 120 members of this group were detained in January 2010 for alleged al-Qaeda ties, and 11 of them spent months in prison. But now the government, and a like-minded prosecutor, argues that this was in fact a scheme cooked up by the “parallel state” of the Gulen movement to crack down on an innocent rival group.
The detention of several Turkish journalists on Dec. 14, which attracted global media attention, was a result of this accusation, for all the journalists were linked with the Gulen movement and were blamed for “propaganda” against the Annotators. Moreover, the prosecutor who launched the investigation soon also added Fethullah Gulen himself to the arrest list, which is likely to create tension between Turkey and the United States. Gulen has been living in rural Pennsylvania since 1999.
That is why it is crucial for Turkish politics right now to figure out whether the Annotators were really “terrorists” with al-Qaeda ties, or whether this was a libel. That is also why the views of third parties, which may be less partisan, matter.
That brings us to WikiLeaks, a rich source which, to the dismay of the US government, has allowed us mortals to get an inside view of the American diplomatic establishment. Thanks to WikiLeaks, in a “secret” wire sent to Washington from Ankara on Jan. 27, 2010, titled “Detained Islamists Not A Threat To US Interests,” we read:
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