What Does Turkey Know that We Don't?

It may be a little bit unusual for a major newspaper like the Wall Street Journal to publish an editorial criticising the conduct of a government leader, anywhere other than the United States, but this one is about Turkey and it made me wonder. [Erdogan's Press Assualt at http://www.wsj.com/articles/ergodans-press-assault-1457308765].

The main point of the criticism lies in our ability to see free speech differently than Turkey.  A court effectively shut down the highest circulation newspaper in the country and blocked its reporters from getting access to the systems needed to publish.  The editorial ends with this note:  

"Mr. Erdogan now rules Turkey much as his geopolitical rival, Vladimir Putin, rules Russia. One lesson, for established democracies as much as new ones, is to beware of popular authoritarians who promise to punish the press...."  


A Reuters story on the same court order saw the whole situation differently.  Ayla Jean Yackley seemed to think the court order was a loss to Erdogan, who wanted schools closed down that were operated by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the U.S.  So what kind of schools does a cleric who lives here, operate in Turkey?  60 Minutes did a story on them, and to our surprise there are many in the United States.   [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-charter-schools-tied-to-powerful-turkish-imam/3]. They are Islamic schools, as one would suspect given his Imam title.  There are lots of Islamic schools in Turkey, but not many in the U.S.


So, look at a description of the tenants of this organization published by the Center for Security Policy.  [ https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Gulen_Final.pdf]. This organization characterizes them as "Islamic supremacism guised as Turkish nationalism".  Some of the descriptions of their doctrine are not very friendly towards the religious beliefs of its host country.  According to this document, when they tried to get a school set up in my county, the school board would not approve its operation. We are pretty conservative here in Virginia, but anyone reading some of the stuff published by this group might think twice before sending their children to schools run by it.  

One of the nice things about freedom of the press is the differences of opinion that allow focus on different aspects of an issue.   We might want to look more closely as what was really behind that court order to close and manage a newspaper.