The Washington-Ankara Rift Widens

Middle East Briefing

The Washington-Ankara Rift Widens

During their recent meeting on the sidelines of the NATO heads of state summit in Wales, Turkey’s new President Recep Erdogan asked President Barack Obama to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the head of the powerful Gulen political movement back to Turkey to be charged with conspiracy against the state.  President Obama promised to study the request, but so far the White House has not responded.
For the past year, the Gulen movement, formerly allies of Erdogan and the AKP, has been engaged in a power struggle, with a network of journalists, prosecutors and police officials all affiliated with the Gulen movement targeting the AKP on a wide range of well-documented corruption charges.  In return, Erdogan has purged many leading Gulen allies from their posts and is now clearly moving to wipe out the movement’s political and economic clout since his election to the presidency. 
In the most recent development, the Gulen-founded Asya Bank has been targeted for shut-down by the Erdogan forces, which have withdrawn government contracts and deposits and blocked several possible takeover bids, triggering a run on the bank’s deposits and a near wiping out of the bank’s stock value.
Within the US intelligence community, there is a deep split over the issue of Gulen’s extradition.  Gulen has been living in voluntary exile in the United States for more than a decade.  But his political movement back in Turkey has been a source of invaluable intelligence on AKP corruption, including major black market oil deals with Iran and extensive arms trafficking and other support for the Islamic State (IS).  Among the more than 1,000 Turkish youth who have crossed into Syria to join IS in the past several months are many members of the AKP youth wing. 
At the same time that Washington has benefited from the Gulen-Erdogan rift, the US State Department and CIA are convinced that the political opposition to Erdogan and the AKP is too weak to take power and therefore, it is essential to maintain good relations with NATO ally Turkey.   If Turkey had signed on to the “coalition of the willing” call for all-out war against IS during last week’s Paris meeting, the Gulen extradition would have been approved.
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