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Thursday, 19 May 2016

Gültekin: The tragedy of the Islamists

The Islamists had dreams, writes Levent Gültekin in Diken. Islamism grew as a reaction against a secular republic that anti-democratically excluded pious people from commercial and political networks.  When they came to power, the Islamists were going to abolish the discrimination against the pious, and stand for freedom and equality. Yet, the hubris of power made them forget about being democratic. And unfortunately, they lacked a democratic culture in the first place. They replaced it with the worship of the leader. The leader has now purged all of his companions who had their origins in the Islamist ideology. The Islamists’ last hope, to whom they clung, was Ahmet Davutoğlu. Now, the vast majority of the Islamists in media, in the bureaucracy and in the party have been purged. Today, Islamist writers, journalists, intellectuals and politicians are in a state of great shock. It has now dawned on them that there’s no place left to them in the Turkey that they helped bring about.

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