Mavi Marmara and Fethullah Gülen\'s critics: Politics and principles

Those who consider the current corruption investigations as a shadow war between Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan trace the breaking away of Fethullah Gülen's support for Erdoğan specifically to the Gaza flotilla incident.I don't believe there was ever an alliance between Fethullah Gülen and Erdoğan of the type imagined by some commentators, far less that this incident was the cause of the split/separation of that alliance.Fethullah Gülen, who may be considered to have derived his interpretive framework from civil/cultural Islam, supported the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) democratization efforts and benefited from the resultant freedoms that this process brought about. The flotilla incident can, however, be useful in demonstrating the difference of Fethullah Gülen's mindset from political Islam.