Erdoğan has claimed that the voice recordings of his son are fabricated and has argued that the Hizmet movement is behind it. In his speech in Denizli, Erdoğan argued that Gülen is responsible for leaks and for the conspiracy against him, saying: “If you want a fight, then do it by creating a party. You, master, who ran away from Turkey, should return and be [involved in] politics. I am telling you to take your children out of their schools and institutions. A public school education is [good] enough. These people have exploited you. So withdraw your children.” At a rally on Saturday, Erdoğan used the phrase “blood-sucker” to describe Hizmet members in his latest verbal assault against the movement.

In his rally in Balıkesir, Erdoğan said: “We will teach a great lesson to traitors in Turkey and external circles alike. You will respond to them via the ballot box.” In another speech in early March, Erdoğan defined the movement as a secret organization trying to infiltrate various segments of the state and added that they would hold the organization accountable for what they had done.

Erdoğan signaled that they were conducting an operation against the Hizmet movement in a rally in Kırklareli and said in a press release that the parallel structure has been organizing itself within state institutions since the 1980s. He said: “We sincerely believed them. If we had realized their secret plans, we would have taken measures a decade ago. Things would have been pretty different.”

Erdoğan defines the fight against the Hizmet movement as a new kind of war of liberation.