How the Concept of ‘FETO’ Corrupts Minds of Turkey’s Opposition

Even the brutal crushing of the Movement by the government has not ended the opposition’s paranoia over its (non-existent) presence in Turkey.

Opposition party lawmakers are seen in a session in Turkish Parliament during pandemic.

When Muyesser Yildiz, a journalist working for ultra-nationalist secular media outlet OdaTV, was remanded behind bars over a fallout with the Erdogan government, she denounced the arrest as a FETO operation. Months before her detention, two other journalists with the same platform decried a FETO mindset behind their imprisonment over a report documenting Turkey’s shipment of weapons to Libya through cargo ships.

The FETO refers to the Gulen Movement in Turkey’s official political lexicon. The pejorative term often generates a negative connotation firmly rejected by the sympathizers of the reclusive U.S.-based cleric who has been declared by the Turkish state as the number one public enemy. In May 2016, two months before Turkey’s enigmatic and bloody coup, the National Security Council (MGK) designated the Movement as a terrorist organization (although it had no legal authority whatsoever to do that).

The abortive coup of July 2016 unleashed a sweeping purge by President Erdogan who hailed the coup as a gift from God. His crushing of the entire movement…