Gulenists are widely thought to have played a key role in a coup attempt against Erdogan’s government in July 2016.
But the formerly friendly relationship between Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the religious movement came back on the agenda this month when a former Turkish chief of general staff, Ilker Basbug, accused AKP lawmakers of drafting legislation in 2009 that allowed Gulenist members of the judiciary to prosecute military officers in civilian courts.
Basbug was one of hundreds of secularist officers investigated for creating an illegal clandestine organisation to overthrow the AKP government in trials that Erdogan later admitted were a plot. The president says Gulenists were wholly responsible, but many observers have noted that the trials aided the Islamist-rooted AKP in its struggle against secularist officials who had dominated the state and military.
The AKP and its coalition partners voted down a bill demanding an investigation into the political wing of the Gülen movement.
Erdogan responded to Basbug’s comments by calling on his party’s lawmakers to file lawsuits against the ex-military chief for insulting public officials.
Kilicdaroglu kept the heat on the ruling party at a speech to his parliamentary party on Tuesday, saying that after coming to power as prime minister in 2003, Erdogan had neglected a warning by Turkey’s National Security Council, at the time one of the key drivers of Turkish policy, that the Gulen movement was dangerous and should be treated as a terrorist organisation.
In the years after Erdogan and the AKP took office, the Gulen movement infiltrated vital state institutions including the security forces, judiciary and military, the CHP leader said.
“I say infiltrated, but they were placed there … They put FETÖ operatives in the most sensitive institutions of the state one by one,” he said, using an acronym commonly used in Turkey to refer to Gulenists.
“The Turkish parliament was used as a means to implement FETÖ’s demands. This paved the way for mass appointments” of Gulenists to state institutions, Kilicdaroglu said.
The opposition leader also took aim at Erdogan for preventing the intelligence chief and chief of staff from appearing before a parliamentary commission that investigated the coup attempt, an act he said amounted to a deliberate attempt to obscure the truth.
Kilicdaroglu's accusations come as no shock to many in Turkey, where the ruling party has been accused of collaborating with the Gulen movement since long before the two sides split when Gulen-linked prosecutors launched corruption investigations into AKP ministers in December 2013. Before that, many AKP lawmakers, including Erdogan, had expressed admiration for the movement’s leader, Fethullah Gulen.
After the 2016 coup attempt, more than 100,000 public sector workers were dismissed over alleged links to the Gulen movement and tens of thousands were arrested. But politicians have been markedly absent among the victims of the purges.
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