Turkish journalist Kerim Balci was advised that the reason the Chicago media paid no attention to his visit here is that Wednesday was an unusual news day. “Particularly because of the old lady who passed away,” Balci explained to me, a reference to the funeral of Judy Baar Topinka. Besides, he went on, the audience he was speaking to wasn’t in Chicago anyway; it was back home in Turkey.
On December 17, 2013, a Turkish prosecutor launched an investigation of corruption in high places that named names, and among the names were business and government leaders close to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In reaction, Erdogan accused followers of Fethullah Gulen, an immensely influential Turkish imam even though he lives in Pennsylvania, of plotting a coup. Erdogan and Gulen had been allies up to this point, and when the president turned against the imam everyone in Gulen’s orbit became suspect. That orbit conspicuously contained the Zaman newspapers.
“But today is a different matter.”
