Gülen movement
The Gülen movement or Hizmet movement is an Islamist fraternal movement. It is a sub-sect of Sunni Islam based on a Nursian theological perspective as reflected in Fethullah Gülen's religious teachings. It is referred to by its members as the "Service" or "Community" and it originated in Turkey around the late 1950s. It is institutionalized in 180 countries through educational institutions as well as media outlets, finance companies, for-profit health clinics, and affiliated foundations that have a combined net worth in the range of 20–50 billion dollars as of 2015.
Its teachings are considered conservative in Turkey but some have praised the movement as a pacifist, modern-oriented version of Islam, and an alternative to more extreme schools of Islam such as Salafism. On the other hand, it has also been reported to have a "cultish hierarchy" and as being a secretive Islamic sect. The movement is also known for initiating forums for interfaith dialogue.
The movement was previously led by the Islamic preacher, Hoca Fethullah Gülen, who left Turkey in 1999 after being threatened by lawsuits and settled in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
The Gülen movement was a former ally of the Turkish Justice and Development Party. When the AKP came to power in 2002 the two groups formed an alliance against military and the Turkish secular elite despite their differences. It was through this alliance that the AKP secured national electoral victories sufficient to form majority governments consecutively in 2002, 2007, and 2011. During this time, hundreds of Gülen supporters were appointed to positions within the Turkish government.
Once the old establishment had been defeated, disagreements began emerging between the AKP and the Gülen movement. The first breaking point was the so-called ″MİT crisis″ in February 2012 which has been interpreted as a power struggle between the AKP and the pro-Gülen police and judiciary. After corruption investigations in 2013 into several politicians and family members of the ruling AKP of Turkey by the Gülen friendly judiciary, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed the movement had initiated the investigations as a result of a break in previously friendly relations. President Erdoğan said Gülen had attempted to overthrow the Turkish government through a judicial coup using the investigations. In response to the investigations, the government seized the group-owned newspaper Zaman, which was one of the most circulated newspapers in Turkey, as well as several companies that had ties to the group.
Since May 2016, the Gülen movement has been classified by Turkey as a terrorist organization under the names Fethullahist Terrorist Organization and Parallel State Structure . The movement has also been designated as a terrorist organization by Pakistan, Northern Cyprus, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. After the failed coup attempt in July 2016, the government blamed the group for the coup and authorities arrested thousands of soldiers and judges. Other members of the group who worked for Turkey's governmental agencies were dismissed and over ten thousand education staff were suspended and the licenses of over 20,000 teachers working at private institutions were revoked due to their affiliation to Gülen. Gülen condemned the coup and denied any involvement. However, the Gülen movement is not recognized as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Gülen movement was included in the declaration in the trilateral memorandum signed by Turkey, Finland and Sweden during the NATO summit in Madrid on 28 June 2022, but did not define it as a terrorist organization.
Membership
A true count of the membership is unknown since the movement is not a centralized or formal organization with membership rosters, but rather a set of numerous, loosely organized networks of people inspired by Gülen. Estimates of the size of the movement vary, with one estimate by Tempo in 1997 stating that between 200,000 supporters and 4 million people are influenced by Gülen's ideas, and another source stating that Gülen has "hundreds of thousands of supporters". The membership of the movement consists primarily of students, teachers, businessmen, academics, journalists and other professionals.Organization
The movement states that it is based on moral values and advocacy of universal access to education, civil society, tolerance and peace. The emphasis among participants is to perform "service" as arising from individuals' personal commitments to righteous imperatives. Along with hizmet, the movement, which has no official name, is termed the Gülen movement or cemaatThe movement's structure has been described as a flexible organizational network.
Lay clergy (Imam-Mullah-Shaykh)
The movement skirted Kemalist Turkey's prohibitions against assembling in non-state sponsored religious meetings.Akin to Turkey's Sufi tariqas are lay religious orders which have been banned in Turkey since 1925. Movement schools and businesses organize locally and link themselves into informal networks. Each local Gülen movement school and community has a person designated its "informal" prayer leader. In Turkey Imam is state-sponsored. In the Gülen movement, this individual is a layman who serves for a stint within this volunteer position, lay clergy. His identity is kept confidential, generally only purposely made known to those with close connections to those participating in decision-making and coordinating councils within the local group. Above a grouping of such "secret" imams is another such volunteer leader. This relationship tree continues on up the ladder to the nation-level imam and to individuals who consult with Gülen himself. These individuals closest to Gülen, having degrees from theology schools, are offhandedly referred to within the movement as mullahs. Gülen's position, as described in the foregoing, is analogous to that of a shaykh of a Sufi tariqa. Unlike with traditional tariqas, no-one makes pledges of any sort, upon joining the Gülen movement; one becomes a movement participant simply by working with others to promote and effect the movement's objectives of education and service.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted a German lawyer that called the organization "more powerful than the Illuminati" and "not transparent as opposed to the claims", and reported that the organization tried to reorganize in the Swabia region of Germany.
Associated organizations
Gülen and the Gülen movement are technology-friendly, work within current market and commerce structures, and are savvy users of modern communications and public relations.Its members have founded schools, universities, an employers' association, charities, real estate trusts, student organizations, radio and television stations, and newspapers.
Hizmet-affiliated foundations and businesses were estimated to be worth 20-50 billion dollars in 2015.
Schools
Schools associated with the Gülen movement can be found in countries with large populations of people of Turkish descent as well as in predominantly non-Turkish Muslim countries where they provide families with an alternative to madrasa education. There were many Gülen schools in Turkey that an estimated 1.2 million Turks passed through. However, after the attempted coup in 2016, all of the schools were shut down and banned by law.In 2009, it was estimated that Gülen linked schools around the world enrolled more than 2 million students. Estimates of the number of schools and educational institutions but it appears there were about 300 Gülen Movement schools in Turkey and over 1,000 schools worldwide at that time. Later reporting by the Wall Street Journal estimated around 150 schools just in the United States, "ranging from networks in Texas, Illinois and Florida to stand-alone academies in Maryland". Although there is no formal networking of all the schools, collectively they form one of the largest collections of charter schools in America."
Most Gülen movement associated schools are private schools or charter schools. The curricula of the schools vary from country to country but they generally follow a secular mixture of Turkish and local curricula with an emphasis on science and math. A 2008 article in the New York Times said that in Pakistan "they encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set examples in lifestyle and prayer", and described the Turkish schools as offering a gentler approach to Islam that could help reduce the influence of extremism. However, in America, "there is no indication the American charter network has a religious agenda in the classroom", according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Two American professors at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Temple University wrote that "these schools have consistently promoted good learning and citizenship, and the Hizmet movement is to date an evidently admirable civil society organization to build bridges between religious communities and to provide direct service on behalf of the common good". Professor Joshua Hendrick of Loyola University Maryland, who studies the movement, said that Gülen himself "does not have a direct hand in operating" the charter schools and it was reported that Gülen has never visited the schools. Alp Aslandoğan, director of the Alliance for Shared Values said that the schools are independent yet indirectly tied to the Gülen movement on the "intellectual or inspirational level."
In Europe there has been some pushback to the establishment of schools associated with the movement. In Georgia, the Georgian Labour Party protested schools opening on the basis that they "aim to spread Turkish culture and fundamentalist religious ideas". In the Netherlands, there were concerns that the schools would promote "anti-integrative behavior" however an investigation in 2010 by the AIVD intelligence organization found that the schools did not represent a threat.
In America there have been allegations and investigations into money-laundering and kickbacks at charter schools connected to the Gülen movement which receive federal financial support. Schools in Texas were accused of sending school funds to Gülen associated organizations by prioritizing construction contracts with Turkish expatriate-owned construction companies over more economical bids, according to reporting by The New York Times in 2011. Folwell Dunbar, an official at the Louisiana Department of Education, accused Inci Akpinar, vice president of one such construction company, of offering him a $25,000 bribe to keep quiet about troubling conditions at the Abramson Science and Technology School in New Orleans which was operated by the Pelican Foundation.