Kerim Balci, a political columnist for Turkey's big daily newspaper, Zaman, said Sunday that the government's accusations against Gulen "are a tragicomic joke." Gulen's organization, Hizmet, is not political and its members are not allowed to join political parties in Turkey, Balci said.
He avoided detention because he was in Chicago as part of a visit to the Niagara Foundation, a Chicago nonprofit that promotes interfaith and inter cultural dialogue. He is speaking at noon on Monday at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
"My name was on the top of the list," he said.
The detentions were not a surprise, he said, because news of it was leaked in advance and they occurred around the one-year anniversary of a corruption investigation of Erdogan's inner circle. What was surprising, Balci said, is that Erdogan targeted Ekrem Dumanli, the chief editor of Zaman, who was taken into custody at his paper's Istanbul headquarters.
"This is the kind of strong message to journalists who want to criticize the administration," he said. "It's not just about remembering the graft. It is about criticizing anything."
Balci said Erdogan's intimidation is working. Today, only Zaman and a handful of small media operations are openly critical of the government. More than half of Turkey's media outlets are controlled by Erdogan or his supporters, Balci said.
"The strategy is working," he said. "People are actually in fear."
Balci said that leaks about the government's plans for detaining its critics appear regularly on Twitter, and Monday he may find out if he's still on the list.
