Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.15
By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
Tension, which is presented as personal confrontation going on for over a year between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, has led to the fact that December 14, police detained leaders of the Samanyolu channel and the Zaman newspaper, which are considered the media and propaganda wing of the Gulen movement (Hizmet).
As a result of a special operation conducted in Istanbul, the chief editor of the Zaman newspaper Ekrem Dumanli and the head of Samanyolu channel broadcast Hidayet Karaca were arrested.
Despite the fact that the operations against the Gulen movement have been held for a long time, attitude of Davutoglu's government to the media was met ambiguously.
Right after the operations were wrapped up, the US made a statement on the matter. The Department of State Spokesperson Jen Psaki said the US is concerned over successive arrests of the representatives of the Turkish media.
The government of Turkey is well aware that the operations conducted by the country's police, in one or another form, will be used for pressuring Ankara. But in reality, the step taken by the government is food for thoughts.
Davutoglu's government takes these measures to prevent a split in the country, the change of power, the incompleteness of the process of democratic solution to the Kurdish problem, which is vital for Ankara and provides a truce with the Kurds, despite the pressure from the US and West with regard to the operations against the media representatives.
Being well aware of the relativity of freedom of speech and expression in the US and the West, Turkey attaches great importance to maintaining its internal stability.
Currently, the main task of Davutoglu's government is to achieve the extradition of Fethullah Gulen to the country. Gulen, known as the founder of 'American Islam' in Turkey, is currently residing in the State of Pennsylvania of US.
Turkey doesn't believe that this issue can be resolved easily, at least because the 'expiration date' of Gulen who closely cooperates with the US intelligence services hasn't passed yet.
In general, it is expected that the operations against the Gulen movement, dubbed as a 'period of cleansing' by the media will continue.
However, it is not very convincing that it will be possible to put an end to the Gulen movement based on ideology with 'cleansing', since this will even more increase the illegality in its activity.
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Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Arabic news service, follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu