In the late 1980s, bearded men would be stopped by police walking in the Grand Bazzar area of Istanbul, and the policeman would burn his beard with a cigarette lighter. As late as the year 2000 a woman Member of Parliament in Turkey was booed and had garbage flung at her when she turned up to take her oath of office, because she was wearing hijab.
In the Muslim world, just a decade ago, Turkey was the third in what we referred to as our Axis of Evil (America, Israel, and Turkey). Today, after the ascendance of the AKP, Turkey has emerged from its dark period of anti-religious extremism, and become a prosperous, successful model for the entire Muslim world, and a source of hope. What Turkey has become is precious to Turks, and it should be precious to us all.
I believe that Turkey is now entering a very dangerous moment in its history. Fethullah Gulen has created a vast network of supporters within this country, they have infiltrated the military, the police, the judiciary, the universities, and most major professional sectors; and they are a fundamentally seditious movement. The government is undertaking a major effort now to identify them and neutralize the threat they pose to Turkey’s stability. There has been a travel ban on all academics and thousands have been suspended from their jobs, pending investigations. No doubt, the Western media will portray these steps, and the steps to come, as anti-democratic and repressive, but you should keep something in mind; the day after the coup attempt, the morning after there was an attempt to overthrow the government of Turkey, there was no nationwide security crackdown, no curfew, no police state-style lockdown of the country; the lives of the citizens went on as usual. This is very much like the security response when there has been a terrorist attack. Within an hour, the trains are running, there is no overt police presence on the streets, no alarmist media hysterics, no blanket surveillance of the population.
Compare this to the West, compare it to the United States, which strives to keep their citizens in a constant state of fear over any minor incident, or just over the supposedly “credible threat” of an incident. Imagine what the US would do if there was a realistic attempt to overthrow the government and assassinate the president. Even now, you have someone like Trump and someone like Gingrich literally calling for rounding up Muslims and deporting them simply because they are Muslims, although incidents of Muslim violence in America are a microscopic fraction of violent crime in that country.
The followers of Fethullah Gulen are aligned with a movement that just tried to topple the government. I am sure that there are members of this group who did not support the coup attempt, and I hope that they are the majority; and I am confident that if investigations do not reveal seditious intent, they will not be prosecuted.
The measures so far being taken by the Turkish government, despite what the media is inevitably going to claim, are restrained, responsible, balanced, and, yes, in my opinion, necessary.