FETHULLAH GULEN: THE NEO-OTTOMAN DREAM OF TURKISH ISLAM
Geries Othman

Asia News
1818
May 6 2009
Italy

In just a few decades Gulen, the son of an imam, has generated an
Islam-based cultural, religious and economic revival. Backed by
PM Erdogan he is disliked by secularist. He preaches dialogue with
Christians against atheism and dreams that Turkey can be a key player
from the Balkans till Central Asia.

Ankara (AsiaNews) – Ataturk’s secularism and the social order
guaranteed by the military appear to be teetering in Turkey today. This
is due to the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, backed by
a moderate Islamist party, but especially to the fact that despite
the secular constitution, religion appears to be taking root in
society. This trend in turn is supported by one of the best known and
more controversial figures in today’s Turkey, Fethullah Gulen, who
is seen a the most important modern Muslim theologian and political
scientist today.

Son of an imam, Gulen was born in Erzurum in south-eastern Turkey, in
1938. A great disciple of Said Nursî, a mystic of Kurdish origin who
died in 1960, he is in favour of a conservative and orthodox vision of
Islam without rejecting modernity which he believes must be addressed.

In the 1970s he organised summer camps in Izmir to teach Islamic
principles, setting up the first student or ‘light’ hostels. Still
tolerated by the state he began building his first schools, then a
university, mass media, groups and associations to breathe life into
"modern Turkish Islam" whereby religion and nationalism could be one.

Because of some statements, Turkey’s National Security Council
condemned in 1998 for "trying to undermine the country’s secular
institutions, concealing his methods behind a democratic and moderate
image." For this reason he has been living in voluntary exile in the
United States since he was sentenced in absentia.

>From his headquarters in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), he continues to
build his empire, which includes a network of more than 300 private
(Islamic) schools in Turkey and 200 abroad (from Tanzania to China,
Morocco to the Philippines and former Soviet Republics with large
Turkic minorities), a bank, various TV stations and newspapers,
a 12-language website and many charities, a virtual business empire
worth billions of dollars.

The key to his success lies in the work of thousands of members of his
movement, who are willing to volunteer their time and energy promote
education, especially where there are few institutions and limited
economic means. Indeed Gulen’s ideas have attracted intellectuals
and diplomats who have become his promoters because they see him as
a promoter of peace and inter-faith dialogue.

In the 1950s Gulen’s mentor Said Nursî preached that Muslims should
join Christians against atheism, trying to contact Pope Pius XII and
Patriarch Athenagoras. Following in Nursî’s footsteps, Fethullah
Gulen began promoting inter-faith dialogue in Turkey. Stating that
his only goal was to "honestly serve humanity," he developed ties
with all Christian Churches in Turkey, including relations with the
Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I and Armenian Patriarch Mesrob
Mutafyan. He sought an audience with Pope John Paul II which was
held in Rome in 1998, and met the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem,
Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron.

Officially his movement has about a million followers, including tens
of thousands of public sector employees in Turkey who are protected
by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (one of Gulen’s best known
sympathisers).

In 2006 a Court in Ankara acquitted him from charges of creating
an illegal organisation for the purpose of overthrowing Turkey’s
secular state and replacing it with one based on the Sharia. But
despite that and his large following, he has been criticised by a
large number of secularists who believe that underneath a veneer of
humanist philosophy, Gulen plans to turn Turkey’s secular state into
a theocracy.

Secular Kemalists have compared him to Khomeini and fear that his
return to Turkey might turn Ankara into another Tehran. The governments
of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also weary and
suspicious of his "Turkish schools promoted by Islamic missionaries."

At the basis of Gulen’s teachings is the notion that state and religion
should be reconnected as they were in Ottoman times and that Turkey
should play the role of beacon for the Balkans and the republics in
the Caucasus. Through him a "neo-Nur" philosophy is integrated into
Turkish, if not pan-Turkic nationalism, which explains his success
among ethnically related Turkic peoples in post-Soviet Central Asia.

Through hundreds of private schools operating in the Central Asian
republics the Gulen movement is giving Turkey a new strategically
significant cultural and economic role and leading communities who
lost their own identity with the fall of Communism back to their
cultural and religious roots in Turkish culture and Islam.

Following this approach Turksoy, an "International Organisation
for Development of Turkic Culture and Art", was set up in Ankara
in 1993. Created by the Turkish Ministry of Culture its goal is to
sponsor and coordinate initiatives within the "Turkic world." It came
into existence after the culture ministers of Turkey, Turkmenistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkish Republic of Cyprus as well as the
autonomous Russian republics of Tatarstan and Bašqortostan signed
an agreement of cultural cooperation.

According to the agreement, the new organisation was established
as a function of new emerging international relations in order to
back cultural restructuring in the Trans-Caucasus region and around
the world. More specifically, Turksoy’s goals are: to establish
friendly relations among Turkish-speaking peoples and nations;
explore, disclose, develop, and protect the common Turkic culture,
language, history, art, customs, and traditions as well as pass them
down to future generations and let them live forever; and develop
an environment that allows Turkic peoples to use a shared alphabet
and language.

Given Turkey’s predicament today, the country appears even more divided
between secularism and political Islam, torn between a desire to turn
towards Europe and the dream of becoming a pan-Turkic regional power.