Ledes and Invitations [Updated]

Erdoğan, speaking at the closing ceremonies of the Turkish Olympiads, via Today's Zaman

What's in a lede? Compare the opening paragraphs of two stories about the same event. First:

Self-exiled Islamic leader Fethullah Gülen should return to Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested last night without directly mentioning the controversial religious figure by name.

“We want this yearning to end,” Erdoğan said. “We want to see those who are abroad and longing for the homeland among us.”

And:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has openly invited Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen to Turkey in a speech he delivered during a closing ceremony of the 10th Turkish Olympiads amid standing ovation of over 50,000 crowd. 

Erdoğan, who spoke after he was granted with a special award by the organizing committee of the Olympiads, implied that Gülen, without directly mentioning his name, should return to Turkey as soon as possible from the US, where he is residing for nearly 13 years.

The first comes from Hurriyet Daily News, the English-language daily published by the Doğan Holding Group. The second comes from Today's Zaman, the English-language version of Zaman, closely associated with Fethullah Gülen. Without making a judgment on the larger process, interesting to see the different ways in which an "invitation" is framed in news reports.

[UPDATE :: 19 June 2012]

Via Hurriyet, Erdoğan tells us that there's nothing legally blocking Gülen's return:

"We told him that we didn't feel it was right that he was living away from home," he said. "This wasn't the first time I used this expresssion. We told him we were ready to do our part if he decided to come back."

"We wanted to eliminate any negative views on this," Erdoğan added. "There is nothing that legally blocks him. The choice is up to [Gülen]. But from what he has been saying, he is not at the moment considering coming back."

And then Mehmet Ali Birand and Yusuf Kanlı suggesting two different motives behind Gülen's recent speech saying he wouldn't be returning to Turkey in the foreseeable future. Birand reads it as Gülen still not fully trusting the situation in Turkey:

As we approached these years, the Ak Party had become self-confident. The prime minister, especially after the last elections, started saying he was in control of the country, that the deep state had been destroyed, the gang-like and force-based formations had been eradicated. He sent messages to the “Hoca” and suggested that he came back. The president personally called him and told him he could come back. Turkey was a safe country now. There was nothing to be afraid of. From now on, there would not be any coups nor would the judiciary act as if it were the guardian of the “secular system.”

However, it was not possible to convince the “Cemaat” about those matters. 

Kanlı, in contrast, reads Erdoğan's invitation as a political ploy:

Why then did Erdoğan make that public appeal to Gülen, asking him return from Pennsylvania? First of all, he wanted to show “friends and foes” that while he is here and will stay on, Gülen is back in Pennsylvania. Gülen may talk on many issues of the country and even upset the government, but though all legal cases against him were dropped and he no longer faces persecution, he has no intention of coming back and engaging himself in efforts aimed at transforming the country into a conservative and religious society.

Secondly, Erdoğan demonstrated with the invitation that he is on good terms with Gülen, and thus made members of the fraternity fearing a rift with government happy.

The end result is that Erdoğan might have just prevented the possible return of Gülen.