Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the law on the transformation of private "dershane" schools has nothing to do with purging the Gulen movement.
"It was a project our government planned more than five years ago," he said during a private TV channel interview on Wednesday evening.
The country’s prime minister slammed U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen and the “bureaucrats” linked to him.
Erdogan said that people linked to Gulen had seeped into state institutions despite all inspections, accusing them of acting in accordance with directives from Gulen, who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
Stating that as an ally of his government the Gulen movement has betrayed him, Erdogan said: "They have abused the strategic institutions such as the intelligence service and police force. If a government does not trust in its intelligence service and security forces, how can it survive?"
Answering a question on recent political developments, including December 17 anti-graft operations, Erdogan said that the impact of these events on the Turkish economy were limited to certain acute fluctuations.
Claiming that certain business people face blackmail by the Gulen movement, Erdogan said that businessmen should trust in the state instead of "the parallel state."
“The state will protect them”, he added.
"However, some business people trust in the Gulen movement; that is what we call parallel state," said Erdogan.
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