Gülen movement an enigmatic mix of Turkish nationalism, religion, education

American sociologist Joshua Hendrick stumbled into the U.S. branch of the Fethullah Gülen Movement by agreeing to attend a 2005 conference about the Turkish Muslim leader in Houston.

Expecting a standard academic conference, what he found instead was a "two-day promotion of Fethullah Gülen and the schools and social network that associate with his teaching."

All the presenters' expenses were covered, and each received a $500 honorarium. Awards of $1,000 were offered for the best graduate-student papers, and reporters were flown in from Istanbul to cover the event.

Hendrick, now at the University of Oregon, went on to write a Ph.D. dissertation on the Gülen movement in Turkey, where the secretive preacher has over decades become one of Turkey's most powerful political figures. The Gülen movement is the key force supporting Turkey's ruling AKP Party, a conservative religious party that competes for power with the country's strongest traditional force - the military.

Along with the military and the AKP, the Gülen movement is Turkey's "third force," the major British consultancy IHS Jane's reported last year.

But defining the movement is difficult because it is "part spiritual, part commercial, part Islamic, part education, part political," Bill Park, a lecturer in defense studies at King's College London, said via e-mail.

Gülen's followers and the leader himself use "strategic ambiguity" in talking about the movement, Hendrick wrote in his 2009 dissertation, "Globalization and Marketized Islam in Turkey: The case of Fethullah Gülen."

"Gülen was born both in 1938 and in 1941 … Gülen is both the reason behind his schools and he has nothing whatsoever to do with them," Hendrick wrote. And when asked about the connections between Gülen-supporting organizations and the movement itself, Hendrick repeatedly heard the same answer: "There is no organic connection between these institutions."

The ambiguity makes some sense in historical context. The Turkish state established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s imposed secularity in the public sphere and put religion under state control. Today the struggle persists between a secularist military and religious forces, with the Gülen movement strongly on the religious side.

The movement "would like to see Islam play a more dominant role in public life," said Hakan Yavuz, a native of Turkey who is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. "The movement is today a religio-political movement similar to Opus Dei in the Catholic Church."

Yavuz continued, "The movement is not a fanatic movement. It's also not a terrorist movement either. But it is a conservative communitarian (movement) and to some extent authoritarian."

The movement also celebrates the Turkish nation and culture, even in some foreign countries where it has established schools, posting portraits of Atatürk and teaching the Turkish national anthem, Park reported in a 2007 paper, "The Fethullah Gülen Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon."

"The movement's philosophy fuses its brand of Islam with a Turkish nationalism," he wrote in a 2007 paper.

Gülen's conflict with the military peaked in 1998, when he was charged with attempting to subvert the secular government. He fled to the United States, where he began living in exile on a retreat in eastern Pennsylvania.

In the United States, Gülen began emphasizing interfaith dialogue, and his followers set up institutions dedicated to that pursuit throughout the country. One, the Foundation for Inter-Cultural Dialogue, is based in Phoenix and annually sends Arizonans on trips to Turkey.

Gülen's presence in the United States inspired some Turkish analysts to begin thinking of him as an American ally. However, the U.S. government has long had close relations with Turkey's military.

The multifaceted picture of Gülen's relationship with the U.S. government became clearer in 2007. That year, Gülen sued the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that it should act on his application and award him permanent residence based on his extraordinary ability in education. The department fought him, arguing that he is not an expert in education.

But eventually the department lost, and Gülen got his green card.

Among those who wrote letters in support of Gülen were George Fidas and Graham Fuller, both former Central Intelligence Agency officials.

"The U.S. has accommodated Fethullah Gülen himself (a source of irritation to Kemalist/secularists in Turkey) and the movement's schools, colleges, dialogue associations, as has the U.K. and other Western democracies," Park said via e-mail. "This is though less the doing of the U.S. government, narrowly defined as of U.S. society, the U.S. way of doing things."

Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or at tsteller@azstarnet.com
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http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/article_41b354b0-6679-5b1e-8a73-4c51ec94b7ad.html

International Conference in Chicago

Nov. 11-12-13 Chicago, IL

“The Gülen Movement: Paradigms, Projects, and Aspirations” is proposed as a conference designed to encourage scholarly research into the questions articulated above, as well as many more. It is to be interdisciplinary in nature so that the work of the conference can begin to draw important connections between analyses of the movement from the perspectives of disciplines such as: theology, religious studies, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, literature, history, philosophy, law, psychology, economics, political science, and international relations, as well as many others.

Fethullah Gülen and the philosophy of happiness

After I saw the schools founded by the Gülen community abroad, I thought about the major mistakes that have occurred in the history of our republic once again.
A person can’t help but wonder if the republican regime or secular civil society organizations could have done what the community has done when they had the chance to. People keep talking about the Gülen community’s financial resources. Didn’t the republican regime and secular forces have any money? Couldn’t big businessmen who were devoted to the republic and the secular system have been encouraged to lead these kinds of educational activities? Didn’t it occur to the state, government or political parties at all? Now that the community is doing this as a voluntary civil movement, they are getting upset. The main issue that is hardest to grasp is why this kind of system, which is so beneficial for Turkey, was not thought of and carried out by another group during the republican period. If one community has the means to do this, then most likely the Turkish state does, too. But undertaking this kind of tremendous task was not thought of or desired. The problem isn’t money; it’s the mentality.
26 March 2010, Friday SERDAR TURGUT, AKŞAM

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-205380-130-fethullah-gulen-and-the-philosophy-of-happiness.html

The Characteristics and Appeal of the Hizmet Movement

The Hizmet (Service) movement associated with the Turkish theologian M. Fethullah Gülen is arguably the most powerful Islamic-based reform movement operating in the world today. However, as the movement becomes more widespread and influential, its critics have become more vocal. The movement has always faced internal opposition from secularists and literalist Muslims. In the United States, the criticism seems to be largely centered in the neoconservative political wing, Armenian organizations, some pro-Israel groups, and certain Christian fundamentalist groups. We believe that these criticisms are unfounded and are either driven by ideology or based on ignorance of the movement’s goals. The purpose of this paper is to examine the great appeal the movement has for its various constituencies. Our paper approaches this matter by considering two interrelated issues: (1) general forces that have molded and continue to influence the Hizmet movement; and (2) the movement’s attraction for its Turkish followers as well as its non-Muslim supporters. These factors include: a widespread hunger for spirituality that is fulfilled by Gülen’s neo-Sufism; an educational vision that seeks to reconcile science with religion; the movement’s direct and personal approach to aid, which satisfies altruistic impulses; the movement’s successful promotion of a moderate, tolerant version of Islam truly interested in interfaith dialogue; Gülen’s extraordinary transformational leadership qualities; the dedication of its followers and, finally, the appeal of a dynamic movement with a real potential to have a positive impact on an international scale.

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Dr. Karen Fontenot is Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Southeastern Louisiana University and professor of communication. Before entering academia she worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer and editor. She received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Louisiana State University and her master’s degree in journalism from the Manship School of Journalism at LSU. Her areas of expertise are cross-cultural communication, organizational communication, and interpersonal communication. She has published widely in these areas, and is the author or co-author of more than sixty articles and conference papers. She is particularly interested in the impact and influence that culture and religion have on human behavior.

Dr. Michael J. Fontenot is a history professor at Southern University at Baton Rouge, La. He received a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University with fields in Russian and European history and a concentration in socialist thought. Benefiting from a number of major grants and fellowships—including four National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, two Fulbright-Hays awards, and two East-West Center grants—he has come to appreciate interdisciplinary approaches and has looked for new understandings at the intersections of various academic fields. His latest works have focused on the Nurcu and Gülen movements as strikingly successful examples both of rhetorical competence and sufi adaptability.

http://gulenconference.net/index.php/component/content/article/34-general-content/199-fontenot