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Stocks plummet as Turkey names Gulenists top security issue

Following the decision to add the Gulenist "parallel state" to its Red Book of national security priorities, companies with ties to the Gulen movement have suffered huge stock market losses.
Customers use an ATM machine at a branch of Bank Asya in Ankara August 12, 2014. Turkish Islamic lender Bank Asya said its second-quarter net profit fell 81 percent to 10.6 million lira ($4.9 million) as its deposit base shrank and lending wilted under pressure from the government. The lender has seen its profits and capital base collapse since December when it found itself at the centre of a power struggle between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his political foe Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric whose
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Last week, the Turkish government’s war on the movement led by Fethullah Gulen reached the National Security Council (MGK), the body that shapes the Turkish state’s security policies. Battling the “parallel state,” as the government calls the Gulenists, was the top issue at the Oct. 30 meeting, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chairing the MGK for the first time after his election as head of state in August.

The council, which met for 10½ hours in its longest session ever, said in a written statement that a “resolute struggle” would be waged against “internal and external parallel structures engaged in illegal activities in a legal guise that threaten our national security and disrupt public order as well as illegal formations.”

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