The Imam's Army |
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The Imam's Army (Turkish: İmamın Ordusu) is a book by Turkish journalist Ahmet Şık on the life and work of Fethullah Gülen and his Gülen movement. On 3 March 2011 eleven people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara, including the journalists Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener. On 6 March they and another seven people were arrested on the allegation they were members of the secret organization Ergenekon. Şık was indicted in the Ergenekon Odatv case because of The Imam's Army, a copy of which was allegedly found on odatv computers. On 26 August 2011 İstanbul prosecutor Cihan Kansız sent a 134-page indictment on 14 defendants, 12 of them in pre-trial detention to the newly founded Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 16. One of the imprisoned defendants was Ahmet Şık. The printing house, İthaki, was the publisher that owned the rights to "İmamın Ordusu" (The Army of the Imam),but in an act of anti-censorship defiance, a version of the book was released in November 2011 under the name 000Kitap (000Book), edited by 125 journalists, activists and academics, and published by Postacı Publishing House. Şık was released pending trial on 12 March 2012 along with fellow defendants Coşkun Musluk, Sait Çakır (tr), and Nedim Şener. The co-author of Ahmet Şık's earlier books on Ergenekon, Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, made a summary of the book. In the book, there are long passages on the life of Fethullah Gülen, already contained in many articles and books, but the book offers further details on the conflict between Necmettin Erbakan and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Relating to the government of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the book details the installment of members of the Gülen community into the Turkish bureaucracy. The question is asked whether the community includes most members of the armed unit of the police.The Democratic Turkey Forum has translated some passages of the book into English. In his draft book, Şık draws heavily on other sources, including quoting extensively from intelligence reports from before the AKP came to power in 2002 and more recent work by other journalists and analysts. Proponents of Gülen have said that "the book aims to create a sensation, rather than provide objective information". At the time of his arrest, Ahmet Sik had almost completed work on a new book that was supposed to be published in May. The book, titled "Imamin Ordusu" ("The Imam's Army"), contains explosive material. It describes in detail how followers of the Islamic theologian Fethullah Gülen have allegedly infiltrated the Turkish police since the mid-1980s. According to Fikret Ilkiz, Ahmet Sik had found out that "80 percent" of the Turkish police force already belongs to the Gülen movement. It is of secondary importance whether the value is really that high. The key thing is that anyone who criticizes the movement is currently at risk in Turkey. "The Imam's Army," has unsettled the Gülen movement and the AKP government. The public prosecutor and investigative judges claim that the book was commissioned by the Ergenekon network, in order to foment unrest in the run-up to the election. They made possession of the unpublished manuscript a punishable crime, and hundreds of police have since been searching for copies. Reaction to the book has been so overwhelming that public prosecutors had to declare that they would not -- at least initially -- pursue people who had downloaded the book via the Internet. More importantly, after almost four years in office, the leading special prosecutor in the case, Zekeriya Öz, has been reappointed to another post. From: 123686_Travel Briefing for the visit of George and Meredith to Turkey |
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On or around 23 March Istanbul Heavy Penal Court 12 ordered the confiscation of a draft for a book that Ahmet Şık wanted to publish under the title of "The Imam's Army".On 1 April 2011 unknown people made the book available on the Internet, and over 200,000 copies were downloaded.
