Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief political adviser, Yalcın Akdogan, has blasted Islamist scholar Fethullah Gulen's movement, the Cemaat, in a column in which he raved about his leader hurriyet daily news reported.
"He [the prime minister] knows well that the ones who machinated against their own country's army, national intelligence, national bank and much-loved political authority will not do anything for the sake of this country," Akdogan wrote in a column published Dec. 24 in daily Star, a steadfast government ally.
"He knows that the ones seeing every road allowable to reach a purpose creates sick understandings," he wrote in his article titled "Do they have light [nur in Turkish] or pommel in their hands," which can be interpreted as a reference to trhe Nur Cemaati that Gulen's movement originated from.
The high-level graft probe that has shaken the political establishment has exposed a bitter feud between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and Gulen, whose followers hold key positions in the police, judiciary and secret services.
Since the beginning of operation on Dec. 17, former allies, the prime minister and influential Islamic scholar Gulen, has been in an ongoing war of words.
Claiming the graft probe was "actually a plot against the government and the nation schemed by an ill-intended alliance that has local and international components," Erdogan targeted Gulen, without explicitly naming him.
"Those who want to establish a parallel structure alongside the state, those who have infiltrated the state institutions ... we will come into your lairs and we will [destroy] these organizations within the state," Erdogan said Dec. 21.