Fethullah Gulen / "Gulenist Terrorist Group"
The "Hizmet Movement" (Hizmet means "Service" in English) - or as it is often called, the Gulen movement, is made up of followers of Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen. His brand of Islamism is attractive to many who want to live their Islamic faith in the modern world. Once a collaborator of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after 2013 he was considered to be his archenemy. The Turkish government calls the Gulen movement a terrorist organization. In July 2016 They made a massive attempt to remove all Gulen supporters from the justice system, the police force, the military and media outlets.
The conflict between Erdogan and Gulen is a conflict between two flavors of Sufi Islam. Erdogan represents a more traditional "tarikat" - the Naksibendis - which emphasized Sunni orthodoxy and discouraged heterodox “innovative” practices and groups. Fethullah Gulen leads a Cemaat, a more recent phenomenon, emerging in the 19th century, with far less emphasis on ceremony than tarikats, and lacking the sheikh-disciple relationship that is central to tarikats.
The core of the movement is education, and it also links religious values with a sensibility for economic activity. Meanwhile, the movement is active in more than 140 countries, mostly building schools and other educational institutions. Nothing is known about the source of its financing, nor about the exact number of its followers, which is normal for a Sufi formation. Analysts estimate he has between 3 million and 6 million followers. Members are said to contribute between 10 and 20 percent of their monthly income. The movement is estimated to hold up to $50 billion in assets – virtually none of them in Gulen’s name.
Fethullah Gulen remains a political phenomenon in Turkey. Although "exiled" [self-imposed] in Pennsylvania since 1999, Gulen's impact continued to expand, aided by legions of loyalist supporters and a network of elite schools. Gulen continued to maintain a following within Turkey and his supporters are believed to have raised some 50 million liras ($17 million) between 2004 and 2015. He preaches Sunni Islam together with a message of interfaith dialogue and his movement, known as "Hizmit" (Service), operates in Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa.
Faced with anti-government protests and corruption investigations, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed his problems in part on Gulen’s followers and foreign powers. The Turkish president has frequently accused his former ally, who lives in exile in the US state of Pennsylvania, of trying to overthrow the government. But in his own messages, Gulen said Erdogan suffered from “decayed thinking” and denied Erdogan’s accusations Washington never found any compelling evidence in Erdogan’s previous claims.
Gulen’s messages of peace and tolerance have won him praise from luminaries in the United States. Former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and James Baker and former President Bill Clinton have all spoken at Gulen foundation events.
The Gulen Movement's purported goals focus on interfaith dialogue and tolerance, but in the current AKP-secularists schism, many Turks believed Gulen had a deeper and possibly insidious political agenda, and even some Islamist groups criticize Gulen's lack of transparency, which they say created doubts about his motives.
Gulen was born between 1938-1942 (varying dates have been given), and initially served as an imam and as an employee of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). He established his own movement in the 1970s based on the teachings of Said Nursi, an Islamic thinker of Kurdish origin, whose followers are called Nurcus. Gulen then broke away from the Nursi framework. Gulen's own philosophy emphasizes the role of science in Islam. He supports interfaith dialogue and condemns terrorism. In the past two decades, Gulen has focused primarily on education, not only in Turkey but around the world. His schools have earned a reputation particularly in Central and South Asia for academic excellence and the advocacy of moderate Islamic views.
Gulen has been living in the US since 1999 when he went there ostensibly for health treatments (a heart condition and diabetes). At the same time, however, he faced charges in Turkey of plotting to overthrow the state. The charges were based on a 1986 sermon where Gulen is heard declaring that "our friends, who have positions in legislative and administrative bodies, should learn its details and be vigilant all the time so they can transform it and be more fruitful on behalf of Islam in order to carry out a nationwide restoration." This indictment gave his travel to the US the appearance of his being a fugitive from the Turkish judicial system. A Turkish Court acquitted him of all charges in 2006. That acquittal was appealed but the acquittal was upheld in 2008.
In the meantime, Gulen had applied for Permanent Residence status in the US. Immigration officials initially rejected Gulen's application to be classified as "an alien of extraordinary ability," but a Federal Court ruled in late 2008 that this rejection had been improper. Gulen now holds a Green Card, and lives in a secluded compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.
The core of the Fethullah Gulen Movement is his network of schools, which extend from South Africa to the United States. The schools emphasize high academic achievement, and they openly recruit and provide scholarships to the brightest students from poor and working class families. Gulenist schools in Turkey routinely produce graduates who score in the upper one percent of the annual university entrance exam. These top graduates often become teachers themselves. The Gulenist doctrine, with its conservative and religiously observant undercurrent, has met fierce hostility in regimes such as Russia, which expelled the Gulenists en masse in the 1990s.
Central Asia was one of the first regions where the movement set up schools in the 1990s as part of a then Turkish-government supported push to spread Turkish culture and influence abroad. The drive, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, saw schools established in all the newly independent Central Asian states with the support of local governments.
However, several of the region's authoritarian leaders later turned against the schools. Uzbekistan closed the schools in the early 2000s, Turkmenistan in the early 2010s, and Tajikistan last year. Russia, which originally welcomed the schools in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, annexed the schools in the early 2000s by putting them directly under the state educational system. None of these countries provided a reason for shutting the Gulen schools. But some observers say that authoritarian governments are usually the first to feel threatened by the existence of any well-organized network in their countries that is not under their direct control.
But it is within Turkey that the movement has its roots, its largest following, and its greatest controversies. The Gulen Movement includes not only educational institutions, including the famous Samanyolu ("Milky Way") school in Ankara and Fatih University, but also the Journalists and Writers Foundation, various businesses, and media outlets such as "Zaman," "Today's Zaman" (English language), "Samanyolu TV," and "Aksiyon Weekly."
In his early years in power, Erdogan drew on Gulen's influence in the judiciary to help tame the Turkish army, which had toppled four governments since 1960, including the country's first Islamist-led cabinet, through a series of coup plot trials. Gulenists reportedly dominate the Turkish National Police [TNP], where they serve as the vangard for the Ergenekon investigation -- an extensive probe into an alleged vast underground network that is accused of attempting to encourage a military coup in 2004. The investigation swept up many secular opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), including Turkish military figures, which prompted accusations that the Gulenists had as their ultimate goal the undermining of all institutions which disapprove of Turkey becoming more visibly Islamist.
The assertion that the Turkish National Police is controlled by Gulenists is impossible to confirm but no one disputes it, and TNP applicants who stay at Gulenist pensions are provided the answers in advance to the TNP entrance exam.
Gulenist newspapers such as "Zaman" relentlessly questioned the validity of the Ataturk legacy and argue that as an EU aspirant country, Turkey must ensure the diminished voice of the Turkish military in political issues. These papers champion the Ergenekon investigation and continually stress that the traditional dominance of the Turkish military has been a negative factor in Turkey's history. Not surprisingly, the the Turkish General Staff openly loathe Gulen, and contend that he and his legions of supporters are embarked on a ruthless quest not only to undermine the Turkish military but to transform Turkey into an Islamic republic similar to Iran.
Even among some Islamist organizations, the Fethullah Gulen Movement had a murky reputation. The City Women's Platform regarded Gulen positively, because he disapproves of the use of violence, but that Gulen's lack of transparency creates doubt about his motives and leads to suspicions about what lies ahead -- even within the communities where Gulen is most active. Gulen's purported main goal is to bolster interfaith dialogue and tolerance, but the notion is widespread among many circles in Turkey that his agenda is deeper and more insidious.
The Gulen movement has been described as a modernized version of Sunni Hanafi Islam. It shares this orientation with "Milli Gorus," the grouping associated with former PM Necmettin Erbakan, but the two movements are otherwise distinct: "Milli Gorus" is Turkey-centric; the Gulen Movement has a broader scope and is more comfortable with the concept of justifying the means for the end, such as discarding the headscarf when necessary. Still, there is some convergence: many of the founders of AKP came from "Milli Gorus," but many officials within AKP are known to be close to the Gulen movement.
Most discussions in Turkey which touch on Gulen tend to be somewhat delicate and deliberately artful. In addition, the political context for conversations about Gulen is complicated because President Gul is himself seen by almost all as a Gulenist, while Prime Minister Erdogan is not. Indeed, some have argued that Erdogan is so firmly outside the Gulen camp that Gulen loyalists view him as a liability. At the same time, the Republican People's Party and other AKP opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party were quick to accuse the US of working covertly to prop up Gulen, allegedly to weaken Turkey's secular foundation to produce a "model" moderate Islamic nation. This accusation relies on the premise that Gulen was given refuge in the US, and ultimately permanent resident status, despite facing indictment in Turkey for illegal anti-secularist activities.
Gulen had his share of non-Islamic supporters, which includes the Eucumenical Patriarch in Istanbul. Given the current AKP-secularist schism in Turkey today, it should not be surprising that any Islamist movement in Turkey would choose to be circumspect about its intentions. Unfortunately, this simply feeds the reflexive tendency in Turkish society for conspiracy theories, and magnifies suspicions about the Gulen movement itself. While the purported Gulen goals of interfaith dialogue and tolerance are beyond reproach, there are aspects of concern in the allegations that the US is somehow behind the Gulen movement.
The US is not "sheltering" Gulen and his presence in the US is not based on any political decision. Gulen applied for, and received, permanent residence in the US after a lengthy process which ended in 2008 when a Federal Court ruled that he deserved to be viewed as an "alien of extraordinary ability" based on his extensive writings and his leadership of a worldwide religious organization. As a Green Card holder, Gulen is entitled to all the privileges which that status entails. His presence in the US should not be viewed as a reflection of US policy toward Turkey.
Turkey's government had taken over companies that are believed to have ties to Gulen, detained hundreds of followers, and removed thousands of Gulen's supporters from government jobs. Turkey's government accuses the Gulen movement of infiltrating the police, judiciary and political system and creating a state within a state.
In May 2016, the president designated the religious movement of Gulen a terrorist group and said he would pursue its members, whom he accused of trying to overthrow the government. The move put the organization built by his former ally legally on par with Kurdish militants currently fighting the army in Turkey's southeast. Erdogan might use the designation in pressing Washington to extradite Gulen.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who conducted an interview through FaceTime with CNN Turk 15 July 2016, said Turkey "cannot be run from Pennsylvania," a reference to Gulen who lives in the US mid-Atlantic state.
Fethullah Gulen denied involvement in the coup attempt and condemned it. In response to the upheaval in Turkey, a nonprofit group serving as a voice for the Gulen movement rebuked the violence. “We have consistently denounced military interventions in domestic politics,” the Alliance for Shared Values said in a statement. “We condemn any military intervention in domestic politics of Turkey.”
On July 16, 2016 Somalia ordered organizations linked to a US-based Turkish cleric shut down after Turkey’s president said Fethullah Gulen was involved the 15 July 2016 coup attempt. The decision came in an extraordinary session of the Somali cabinet on Saturday. The government ordered Turkish citizens working for Gulen-linked organizations to leave the country within seven days. The government said the services the organizations provided, such as education and health care, will continue under new administration. The cabinet said the decision was in response to a request from the Turkish government.
Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Turkish cleric and ally-turned-foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, died 20 October 2024 at the age of 83. No cause of death has yet been given although he was known to have been in poor health. Gulen had resided since 1999 in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains in the United States, where he lived in an apartment on a compound owned by the Golden Generation Foundation, a nonprofit operated by his supporters in the US. Though he reduced his public appearances in his later years, he continued to release statements and writings urging followers to maintain their commitment to education, dialogue, and peaceful activism.
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