Turkey's most powerful religious group, the Fethullah Gulen Movement, has been feted at home and abroad as a model of moderate Islam. These days, however, the group’s reputation appears to be taking a hit in a controversy involving the arrest of a popular senior police officer.
The stage erupts into flashing blue and white light. The music is thunderous. A little girl from Mozambique appears, dressed in a traditional costume.
"Hello Turkey,” she shouts in Turkish, the microphone fastened behind her right ear, Houston ground control-style. "Turkey," she shouts again, "I want to see your hands."
On the picturesque island of Buyukada in the Marmara Sea about an hour’s ferry ride from Istanbul, tourists climb a steep track through pine trees to peer through locked gates at the decaying remains of an old Greek orphanage.
At the heart of the diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey, arising out of the tragic May 31 commando raid on an aid flotilla steaming towards Gaza, lies the rise of the previously obscure IHH, the Turkish Islamic non-governmental organization that spearheaded the convoy.
