Today Kemalism is dead, and his secular system has been thrown into the dustbin. What is happening now is a substitution of Gülenist tyranny for the former secularist or Kemalist tyranny, and that shift does not make Turkey any more democratic.
Kemalism was a phenomenon beyond party politics; it was a way of life, and even some secularists treated Kemalism as a religion and the founder Ataturk as an extraordinary person.
Nevertheless, based on the military’s stronghold, a powerful central role for the state, and the Kemalist ideology, today this system is being replaced by another ideology or ism called “Gülenism.”
Gülenists think of and see Gülen as an extraordinary person and his ideology as a way of life; some of his followers even see him and think of him as the Mehdi, the savior of Islam and humanity, believing that they are the chosen ones, that they are the ones who know best in all matters, and that they can never speak against Gülen. They want to have one man, one party, and one hegemony with no room for competition. In a strong central hierarchy, as most of human history has been telling us, a craving for power drives men. [Kurd Net] Read more
