Do Gülenists, who ended up being a "criminal organization" after having once been respected as a community devoted to the "Hizmet" (service) employ a self-criticism mechanism that can help them understand where they went astray?
At this point, probably the issue of the "leader's responsibility" should be dealt with… For some, though, the responsibility for goings-on falls not on Fethullah Gülen but on those people around him who misdirect him. In such cases, members of failed organizations and companies always resort to the "he was perfect, but those around him were not" argument, but it never gets accepted.
Besides, Gülen's leadership test goes on these days with behaviors that will not earn him a passing grade. It is known by almost everyone that those who accepted Gülen as an undisputed leader and shaped both their lives and careers in line with his instructions are confronted by various difficulties nowadays in Turkey.
Can watching silently what happens to people who tied their destiny to his - from his very distant sanctuary in Pennsylvania - be a behavior appropriate for a real leader? The right thing for Gülen is to say "I am coming to Turkey. Do not judge my policemen and imams. Judge me," and board a plane and return to Turkey.
Erdoğan's first call
Actually, if Gülen had returned to Turkey after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, "We want this yearning to come to an end" at the Turkish Olympics organized by the Gülen Movement in June 2012, what happens now probably would have never happened. They would have thus gained time to complete their plans for seizing control of the state. And the illusion of the Gülen Movement that they are stronger than the AK Party would have persisted in their fantasy world. The prime minister said in his first call, "Absence from home is loneliness.
The cost of longing for home is burdensome. We want to see those who are abroad and longing for their homeland to be among us. We are saying that this absence from home should end. We want it to end."
Gülen: "I will not return"
In response to that, Gülen said: "If [my return] is to halt positive developments in Turkey, even with a possibility of 1 percent, [I prefer] staying here if my lifespan allows it, and I will not return to harm my country, my nation and those [positive] things in my country.
If some people are to put the [state] administration [in Turkey] in difficulty… to take revenge when I return to Turkey, then I will continue to live here [in the U.S.], despite the painful homesickness."
When considering later developments, the attempts targeting the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and its head Hakan Fidan, coup attempts on Dec. 17 and 25, curses and forged tapes, it can be predicted that Gülen was waiting for other things to return.
Erdoğan's second call
As a result, Erdoğan called on Gülen again to "return to Turkey" at a meeting in Konya in June 2014, two years after his first call. But that call was very different from the first one. Erdoğan addressed Gülen as, "The one in Pennsylvania, if you are honest, if you haven't done anything wrong…" and continued, "He says he lives in seclusion. Can there be a better place for seclusion than Konya, Erzurum, or Bursa? Come on, return to Turkey. Why don't you come back to Turkey? What are you doing in Pennsylvania? Come out and return to Turkey. Don't brew plots from there. There is a plot above all other plots. One day, that plot will beat you as well."
To sum up, if Gülen is a true leader, he will say "I will return" without expecting any call or summons, and won't leave the people here loyal to him to
their fate.
