Current president Park Geun-hye is the daughter of the former authoritarian president of South Korea, Park Chung-hee. Her father come to power by military coup in 1961 and stayed in power for two decades, until his assassination in 1979. That was not the first assassination attempt he saw, 4 years prior to his death, a North Korean spy had tried to kill President Park, but the assassin accidentally killed his wife, Yuk Young-Soo.

It is during this tumultuous time, after her mother’s death, that Geun-hye became susceptible to anything linking to her deceased mother. Very soon after her mother’s funeral, she met Choi Tae-min, who was a former soup factory worker, later pseudo-Christian (or some say shaman) cult leader claiming to heal people. Much like Rasputin, here was a rags-to-riches story of a soothsayer.

Choi Tae-min convinced the former dictator’s daughter that her mother did not die completely. Rather she had left an open path to reach her daughter when he saw her mother asking for help in a dream. Building a relationship with someone in such a vulnerable state, Choi was able to gain her trust and started to take advantage of this relationship. As a result, he collected a fortune based on his informal relationship with the president’s daughter. That type of relationship also gave him the power to enter into business dealings and to further expand her interests.

Many years after Park’s death, when finally South Korea had embarked upon a democratization process in 1987, Park Geun-hye appeared again on the political arena but this time not as a president’s daughter, but as an ambitious politician competing for parliament. After her long political career, Park Geun-hye finally got elected as President of South Korea in 2012. With Park’s election, Choi’s daughter Choi Soon-sil – characterized by the American embassy in Seoul in a WikiLeaks cable dated 2007 as the “Korean Rasputin” – allegedly became the power behind the throne. Choi, it is said, took full control of government, from preparing important speeches to gaining access to official secrets, and the Choi family transformed the Presidency into a puppet.

These shocking allegations have been revealed only recently. People have learnt about the relationship between the Choi family and Park Geun-hye, which had begun very early on in her life and continued seamlessly at every stage of Park’s success. The first event which exposed this dangerous sham was when Choi Soon-sil’s daughter was unfairly accepted to Ewha Womans University, a prestigious university in South Korea. This was the catalyst for wide spread protests, the perception that the “university entrance exam was the only way to climb the social ladder,” as was remarked by Kwon Jong-sang, a South Korean blogger, and through nepotism, the exam had been removed as a requirement for the powerful.

The interesting thing is that the Gülen cult works in much the same way. Suspicion was first raised about the organization when rumors emerged that exams for the military, police and other government institutions were stolen. Rigging the exam process to gain access to the state was seen as a crucial goal to attain power in the long run.

When it comes to the Turkish case, we see a similar pattern. An organization which tries to capture political power and state institutions using “celestial” power established in a long and historical context, with some differences. Fethullah Gülen, the cult leader just like father Choi, followed a more institutional path in order to gain power. While Choi had convinced the top of government directly, Gülen placed his loyal followers into the government and the state, step by step. The term “state infiltration” may be a Hollywood-style term for Westerners, but it was the exact case in Turkey. Gülenists had started the infiltration many decades earlier. He had even urged his followers to secretly infiltrate the state in a private meeting.

In terms of methodology, whereas the Chois were using pseudo-Christianity or according to some sources, shamanism as a base for cultic features, Fethullah Gülen’s was using Islamic teaching as a base for his miraculous, divine abilities.

Firstly, he had positioned himself above all other humans, and he was even setting up “meetings” with Prophet Muhammad every Thursday, according to one of his former followers. Probably in one of those meetings, he even received an order from the Prophet for “doubling the tweets” (referring to the tweets for the battle against the government by his followers in 2013). He also said that the Prophet came to the International Turkish Olympiads, an annual Gülenist event. After convincing his followers of his superior position, all members became ready for any order coming from the top of the pyramid.

Secondly, Gülen started establishing huge networks, foundations and businesses as well as collecting money from members. Even if some fundraising ended up being used for lobbying activities for Hillary Clinton, because the members are strictly tied to the cult, no objection were ever raised.

Thirdly, the most significant part was education. As mentioned above, many of his followers were stationed in police departments, army, judiciary, political parties, media etc. According to a statement from a military official facing charges of being a leader of the July 15 coup attempt, the military entrance exam’s questions were given to Gülenists as early as 1989. The long-term purpose of education was clear: to raise students from rural areas and use the promise of upward social mobility to make them loyal in order to carryout given tasks. When the government realized how it was entirely surrounded by Gülenists, it was very hard to get rid of the virus all at once. After all, it was a group of people hypnotized by a Choi-ish style, not rational foes.

Most people assume others, including political leaders, behave rationally, as is described in game theories. But the cases of South Korea’s Choi Soon-sil and Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen show even in our “modernity” this may not be the case: individuals, even those in important positions of responsibility, may be motivated by emotional and irrational thinking, instead of the rational reasoning one would expect from modern theories of political science.

Specifically, during the last days of July, James Clapper, the Director of US National Intelligence, complained by saying, “Many of our interlocutors in the Turkish Army have been either purged or arrested”; in the same vein, Joseph Votel, the Commander of US Central Command, was “concerned” about, not the coup attempt, but how US operations in the region will be affected by the attempt. Such statements raise the suspicion of whether the US might have been behind the coup attempt. A few days after the coup attempt, John Kerry, US Secretary of State, made a statement to the effect that operations against FETO members should not go too far, which was sufficient to establish a background for the criticisms directed at the US. Tens of articles of the kind supporting the failed coup were published in the mainstream Western media such as the New York Times, the Guardian, Time, CNN, the Washington Post, BBC, the Times, and Der Spiegel. It is no wonder that such publications led to deep disappointment in Turkey.

Anti-Turkey Stand of the Western Media in History

As one considers the background of perception management in the Western media against Turkey, it is seen that this disappointment goes far back into the past and has been practiced for decades by contemporary media outlets. Western media, to a large extent, has positioned itself against Turkey on many issues. For instance, Kemal Karpat, in his book entitled Politicization of Islam, in a section on press, talks about how European countries used the Western press against the Ottomans, helping us understand better the current state of affairs with the following example: “The foreign powers used their ‘free’ press to excoriate and condemn Abdulhamid without causing diplomatic incidents except on rare occasions. The French used Le Figaro, while the Russians enlisted Le Nord, a Brussels newspaper, into their service and financed the famous salon of Madame Olga Novikov in London, in which Turks were described as unfit for Western civilization and as promoters of ‘Muslim fanaticism’.” The excerpt underlines the fact that, since the 19th century, Western countries have sought to keep the Ottomans under control by using the press and financing certain lobbies to demonize the Turks.

A similar assessment is made by Orhan Koloğlu, in his book entitled The History of Press. Koloğlu recounts that, during the period 1828-1829, the beginning of the Greek uprising, thousands of Muslim children, women, and elderly were massacred by the Greeks; yet, the Western press pointed at the Ottoman State as the side that committed the massacres; such a blatant and overt disinformation campaign by the Western press was astonishing to the Ottomans. In the 19th century, the same attitude was exhibited by the Western press in the cases of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Armenia.

The Western media’s anti-Turkey publications after the July 15 coup attempt, and the two examples I presented from the 19th century, demonstrate that Western media outlets target the victimized rather than the guilty. As one traces back over the vital issues Turkey has faced, it is clear that the Western media has continued incessantly with the same publication strategy, unless the West had a direct self-interest at stake.

Edward Said’s Diagnosis

The anti-Turkey campaign conducted by the European and the American mainstream media is in perfect agreement with the emphasis made by Edward Said in his book Culture and Imperialism. In his work, Said tells about “the existence of an international media that invades insidiously an incomprehensively vast land.” Because, the matter of transforming many different events in many different places around the globe into news, after filtering them through Western interests, has begun to establish another method of hegemony.

To illustrate this, for example, the operations conducted by Turkey against the terror organizations DAESH and PKK have been distorted by both the New York Times and Der Spiegel to claim that “Turkey is killing civilians, invading the region, and killing the Kurds.” As visual misinformation, pictures of people killed by the Russian bombardments in the region were used non-factually. The increasing dosage of such publications after the July 15 coup attempt is proof that the anti-Turkey campaign is being escalated deliberately. On the night of July 15, NBC announced that “Erdogan, refused landing in Istanbul, is reported to be seeking asylum in Germany,” which was certainly a lie; yet, the channel has not apologized for this misinformation. The cover of a special Der Spiegel issue on Turkey on September 11, 2016, carries both visually and content-wise stamps of orientalism. On the cover, the magazine uses such expressions as, “Ein Land verliert die Freiheit” (a country loses its freedom) and “the dictator in fight with his own cities,” and pictures the minarets of the Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Mosque) as fired rockets. In tone with Said’s emphasis, a typical distortion and otherization has been committed by the magazine. That is, the news is veiled as it is propagated.

Journalism as Fictionalism instead of Objectivity

The above excerpts from historians Karpat and Koloğlu show that the Western media has a long and prejudiced history against Turkey, which still continues today. In this historical stretch, it appears that there have been many politically charged, manipulated, and constructed news stories published and disseminated by the Western media against Turkey. Thus, disregarding the principle of objectivity, and other principles and regulations that define the realm of professional ethics are ignored when it comes to Turkey.

No doubt, Turkey has to respond to such campaigns and these efforts must include both public diplomacy and lobbying activities. However, deep prejudice and the absence of objectivity exhibited by the Western media against Turkey are major problems mostly related to the administrators of the biased newspapers and to their cultural capitals. It is difficult to find a direct remedy for this, because the manipulation of the media is a result of conscious and deliberate choice. In spite of this, Turkey should never give up in the attempt to remind prejudiced media managers of the fundamental principles of journalism and the simple facts and rules of democracy.

Early infiltration of the military was based on the self-capacity of the candidate students motivated by the FETO cadres, but FETO members under cover as secular officers in the military were able to steal the exam questions to provide the answers to future cadets during late 1980s and early 1990s.  Lt. Col. Levent Türkkan, the aide de camp to Gen. Hulusi Akar for years and involved in the coup attempt on July 15 2016, confirmed that he was supplied in advance with the military high school entrance examination questions in 1989.

Each military student and their families were subjected to an intelligence inquiry by the national intelligence service, police and the gendarmerie intelligence units. Since the FETO candidate cadets were selected from among religiously conservative families, they had no chance of surviving in the military high schools. Thus, students were advised to adapt themselves to the Kemalist discourse during school days; however, their actual devotion and loyalty was to the FETO and they continued to pay visits to the houses of Gülenists in İzmir, Bursa and Istanbul, where the military high schools are located. During these visits, students were warned not to reveal their FETO identity, ordered not to take the Risale-i Nur booklets with them to the school campus, and even asked not to pray during their time at school.

Once they had passed the first two years at the school, they rarely encountered problems in being identified as Gülen-linked students and easily graduated from military high school and became qualified to enroll in the military academies, which is the next major step to becoming an Officer. The majority of the military academy students (army, navy and air force) came from the military high schools, and some students from the civilian high schools also enrolled at the academies. A similar path was followed by FETO students from the civilian high schools, taking the university entrance exam to enroll at the military academies. However, in this case, FETO members at private tutoring centers and the OSYM (Student Selection and Placement Center) played a vital role in enabling the students to enter the military academies by educating them and even providing the exam questions.

Senior FETO officers attending the interviews gave preference to crypto-FETO students who applied to become cadets at the academies. After being accepted into the academies, the students survived in the schools by pretending to share or sometimes by advocating secularist and Kemalist ideology, and they were successful in that regard. But, at the same time, they expressed their devotion and loyalty to FETO and paid regular visits to Gülenist houses. They were told in these houses that their duty was to graduate with honors degrees, which would enable them to be potential candidates for the status of General in the future. They were motivated, educated and helped with school assignments. Even if they were unlikely to be potential candidates for General status, FETO expected to benefit from their operational positions.

Who organized the coup attempt?

The July 15 coup plotters were mainly of the rank of Brigadier General, becoming generals in 2012, 2013 and 2014, entering the military high schools in the early 1980s and the military academies during the mid-1980s. The operational-level coup officers ranged from Lt. Colonels to Captains, who entered the military high schools in the early 1990s and 2000s. The pre-military school period and the entrance process into both the military high schools and the academies were vital for FETO to infiltrate the military, and it was mainly the Officers that FETO exploited. A former military personnel, on the condition of anonymity, states, “… after-school infiltration into officer status is not a desired procedure for FETO members, since it jeopardizes the compartmentalization” (this is an unconventional warfare definition for the division of the cellular structure of a secret organization).

The second status that FETO desired to infiltrate was NCO circles. NCOs play a significant role in technical and tactical military missions. Since the strategic aspect of NCO positions is rare, FETO made no long-running efforts to infiltrate NCOs. However, FETO aimed to infiltrate the NCO schools of the gendarmerie and the air forces, where the NCOs are mostly employed. The gendarmerie is the law enforcement agency and has the closest ties with local people in Turkey. It also has a widespread operational and intelligence network, at work in every corner of Turkey, and gendarmerie operations and intelligence are dependent on NCOs. On the other hand, the air force ground service also is dependent on NCOs, and no flights can be made without ground services. These two NCO circles were targeted for infiltration by FETO. However, the biggest infiltration effort against NCO status was made with the young Sergeants in their early 20s. Their youthful energy was usurped by the Gülenists.

FETO members in the military targeted NCOs who regularly prayed as true believers of Islam and victimized them for discharge from the military to divert attentions from FETO members in the military. During the 1990s, military personnel who were discharged from the Turkish armed forces were either ordinary Muslims or belonged to other branches of the Nur Order, of which the Gülenists allegedly claimed to be a part, but not the Gülenists themselves. This was a tactic utilized by FETO to survive in the military.

A discharged NCO states that, “… in 1997, my unit and I visited a commando unit for a military training. I asked a place to pray at noon and a senior NCO of the hosting unit who was a FETO member came by and warned me that I should not pray openly, instead I should hide my way of practicing Islam. I was shocked. I was not the member of an order and I told him that I am a Muslim and I have no intention of hiding my identity. He got very pissed …”

FETO had tried not only to infiltrate the military from outside but also to “desterilized” the strategic and operational units of true soldiers. The Special Forces (SF) became a primary target of FETO, and between 2004 and 2008 hundreds of elite SF warriors were transferred from their teams into regular army units.

When the figures involved in the military are analyzed above, the infiltration target is clearly seen. FETO had an agenda to capture and hold the strategic chain of command in the Turkish armed forces. The lately promoted Generals were perceived as the main group behind the coup attempt, but the real soldiers of the state were not involved in this treason.