The Fethullaçi, or the project of an ‘Enlightened’ Turkey

Published in French in La vie des idées, December 2005-January 2006

Written by Marie-Elisabeth Maigre

Leaded by the religious leader Fetullah Gülen, the Fethullaçi movement is affirming itself as a central actor in the economic, social and political life of Turkey. Far from a fundamentalist Islam, this network which preaches education and tolerance owns schools and press groups through which its members work for the construction of an opened, democratic and fully European Turkey.

Since the 1980s, thanks to the liberal policies of the Prime Minister Turgut Özal, the pro-Islamic movements of thoughts and social action which had been banished by the Kemalist ideology have reborn gradually in Turkey. New media, holdings related to Sufi orders, even businessmen associations like MÜSIAD or ISHAD, affirm themselves as key actors of the Turkish public life, bridges between modernity and the traditional Anatolian society. In the heart of this renewal of visibility of Islam in Turkey, the Fethullahçi, close intellectually to the Sufi movement Nur ("Light") and inspired by Fethullah Gülen‘s precepts, occupy a preeminent place. In two decades, this movement built a multinational and elitist educational network, which extends today to around fifty countries and claims to contribute to the emergence of a generation of individuals able to reconcile moral firmness with scientific and intellectual efficiency. The formula “Enlightened Turkey”, in reference to the expansion of the Nur movement, makes it possible to appreciate this Muslim movement with a universal vocation and articulated around the concepts of education, tolerance, and inter-religious unison, which tries to counter the pernicious heritage of the Enlightened French and positivist materialism, and encourages a return to the dialogue between the religious and scientific worlds. As Andrew Mango, a great expert of Turkey, underlines: “Considered by some as the Islamic modernizers, [the Fethullahçi] was compared with the Protestants and with the Opus Dei because the members of the congregation are the ones who tries to transform the contemporary society by the example of their good works”[1]. The community is also characterized by its media impact because it holds several publications as well as radio and television channels. This movement thus deserves our attention because it is in the heart of a social and ideological reformism whose influence shall not stop growing in the next years, as well in Turkey as in the rest of the world.

A charismatic personality

First, let us place the spiritual guide. Born in 1938 in the region of Erzurum in Eastern Anatolia, Fethullah Gülen is educated in a very pious family. His father, himself an imam, taught him very early Arabic and Farsi. At adolescence, he receives the tutorial in religious sciences of Professor Mohammed Lutfi as well as a “modern” education in science, literature, philosophy and history; he also sympathizes with some students of Bediuzzaman Saïd Nursi and he is introduced with his Letters of Light[2]. This discovery of the “contemporary” Sufi school is decisive for young Gülen’s intellectual and spiritual training, even if he has never been an initiate of any Sufi order. At around twenty years old, he leaves Erzurum to teach in the mosque of Erdine, before joining the Koranic school Kestanepazari of Izmir in 1966 where a first community organizes itself spontaneously, under the effect of its message. After the coup of March 12, 1971, Gülen is imprisoned for clandestine religious activities and spends seven months in prison. The rest of the decade is devoted to itinerant lectures in several cities of Western Anatolia. The hoca then gains an immense popularity thanks to its sermons, private conversations and conferences whose topics are as well religious as social, economic and philosophical. Its ideas influence especially students, but also doctors, university professors, civil servants, tradesmen and businessmen. In the 1980s, although he is under Turgut Özal’s official protection, Gülen continues to draw the suspicion of the secular and military elites. However, today like yesterday, its speech does not have anything “jihadist”. On the contrary, he did not stop defending tolerance and interfaith dialogue because “Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and, even Hinduism and other world religions accept the same source for themselves, and, including Buddhism, pursue the same goal”[3]; moreover, Gülen met the Pope John Paul II in 1998. Even so victim of the anti-Islamist wave of repression issued by the Turkish military staff at the end of the 1990s, the “hoca” takes refuge in the United States. He is currently the honorary president of the Rumi Forum, a platform for inter-cultural and interfaith dialogue founded in 1999 and located in Virginia, and he is regularly invited to university conferences[4].

Islam and democracy

In last July, the US academic review The Muslim World published a special No. on Fethullah Gülen and his works, including a series of academic articles and a long interview of the religious leader, which, reproduced on September 14th in the daily paper Zaman, became broadly accessible. In this interview, Gülen explains its political conception in connection with its Muslim faith. He defends a communitarian vision of society because, he explains, “a society is like an organism; the parts are interrelated to and in need of one another”. For him, contrary to the belief conveyed by the systems of modern thought, individualism is not a pre-condition of freedom because the individual alone finds himself deprived in front of totalitarian ideologies and of diverse forms of social oppression. In Islam, as believers owe obedience only to God and are protected by the force of the links uniting them, in theory they are free because they do not have to submit themselves to a temporal, oppressive power. According to Gülen, the Muslim religion includes a moral duty of control of politics by the believers’ community, as well as the respect for the rights and freedoms of the other religious minorities. The “hoca” does not see the necessity of establishing an Islamic State based on the principles of the Sharia. He distinguishes indeed between the rules of Islam, such as they appear in the Koran and the Sunna, and successive historic experiences which correspond to the appropriate needs of their times. Now as the consensus or “mutual contract” between Muslims is essential in government, a “caliphate” cannot be imposed on the populations by force, as it would occur possibly in a hypothetical application: “the revival of the Caliphate would be very difficult [today] and making Muslims accept such a revived Khilafah would be impossible”. On the other hand, Islam is particularly related to democracy because if “in a democratic society the source of law is colorblind and free from ethnic prejudice” favoring then the “development of human rights, political participation protection of minority rights…”, “no one can ignore the universal values that the Qu’ran and the Sunnah have represented with regard to the rights mentioned above”. For the Muslims who live in democracy, “there is [thus] no need to seek an alternative state”. At the same time, being based on faith (iman), the submission to God (ubudiyyah), the knowledge of God (ma’rifah), and especially the good deeds (ihsan), Islam possesses the capacity to enrich democracy: “the spirit [of Islam] also promotes actions for the betterment of society in accordance with the view of the majority” while reconciling the spiritual and material worlds.


Some significant means of action

We can maybe wonder if Fethullah Gülen would benefit from so much notoriety if its ideas had not been translated into a practical application able to influence the every day life of thousand persons all around the world. We should not neglect the determining role of the group of believers who answered to the call of their hocaefendi (“revered master”) from the 1970s. Endowed with a missionary spirit, the Fethullahçi movement is running hundreds of companies, schools and associations, financed today by private donations and administered by the best educated members[5]. Besides very popular measures as the institution of several hundreds of dormitories for students, scholarships and summer camps, the organization possesses and manages in Turkey one hundred schools (…); the professors, graduated from the best Turkish universities, have to enlighten spiritually and ethically the pupils through their example. The community also founded 200 hundred schools around the world, from the United States to Australia via England, Tanzania, China, and mainly the Turkic republics to which Gülen gives a special attention[6]. The purpose is to form local elites which take Turkey as a model. Proofs of the initiative’s success, the pupils of the Fethullah Gülen’s schools are frequently awarded medals at the “World Knowledge Olympiad” organized every year in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. Finally, the Fethullahçi distinguishes themselves by their media and entrepreneurial presence, that is mainly: the television channel Samanyolu (“Milky Way”), the radio station Burc, the daily paper Zaman, the weekly magazine Aksyon (“Action”), the news agency Sinziti, the association ISHAD which includes 500 businessmen, the bank Asya Finans or, finally, the insurance company Isik.

Critical prolongations: the question of the accession of Turkey to EU

Even if obviously they converge, the intellectuals of the movement’s ideas, such as they appear for example in the column “Commentators” of Zaman, should be distinguished from Fethullah Gülen’s because they carry a critical glance on foreign policy generally absent in the speech of the “hoca”. Between September and November, the opinions of the daily paper crystallized on the question of the integration of Turkey in the European Union (EU), in the context of the already historic “October 3rd”[7], and on the often-biased image that the European countries can have of Turkey. The commentators underline the “contradictory demands”[8] of UE and the bad will political which gives the negative impression that UE “does not want the reconciliation of civilizations”[9], widening “the existing gap between it and the Muslim world as well as Muslim communities living in Europe”[10]. “If there wasn’t a Cyprus problem, they would definitely have produced another artificial issue” Erhan Basyurt complains, while Nedim Hazar writes ironically: “There are lots of reasons for someone who wants to find excuses. While they are saying the Armenian issue or Chyprus etc., they may also ask us to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or to catch a bird with our mouths”[11]. The ambiguous attitude of France is repeatedly underlined, notably after its statements on the necessary recognition of the Greek part of Cyprus by Turkey, while it is impossible “to move forward without consent of Paris”[12]; The negative result of the referendum on the European Constitution is also accused of being responsible of the blockings: “Had the constitution not killed by the French through the referendum, this confusion would have been reduced to a certain extent. In decision making process, a majority rule system would have substituted the system of the right to veto for each member. This would have protected the EU from being held hostage by tiny members such as Luxembourg or the Greek Cypriots”[13]. This refusal is considered inequitable in many respects. At first, the non-regulation of the Cyprian question cannot be exclusively imputed to Turkey, to which is demanded the access to ports and to Turkish airports for Cyprian Greek ships and planes whereas the economic embargo on the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is maintained; furthermore, the Cyprian Greeks, and not the Turks, are the ones who refuse the Annan plan.

It is again necessary to evoke the democratization efforts realized by Turkey since the summit of Helsinki in 1999. The journalists of Zaman, proud of their Turkish identity and their cultural inheritance, underline that it is not so much for Europe as a geographic and cultural entity they long, that for the system of democratic standards which it represents for Turkey: “No matter what is the name of the standards to live like a human being, which are called the Copenhagen Criteria; we like them, and we love them. It does not matter wether you call them the Beijing Criteria or Riyadh Criteria”[14]. Besides, the membership is not seen as the adoption of an exogenous system but as a return to origins: “My ancestors had these norms years ago. They managed to live like human beings and in peace for centuries, and what is more, they showed the Europeans, who are dribbling us back and forth today, these norms, while they were struggling in a dark moor and also showed them what civilization is like”. Finally, the recent riots in the French suburbs revived the debate on the compatibility between the European, Turkish and Moslem identities. Kerim Balci underlines that Islam implies a cultural dimension which must be accepted as integral part of the European identity if Turkey obtains the membership. Now this condition cannot be “achieved by changing the system or introducing new laws. Human culture should altogether be reshaped. What will enable that is the intercultural dialogue which will bring the love inherent in humans to light”[15].

The simultaneous analysis of the discourses of Fethullah Gülen and some commentators of Zaman let appear a crucial paradox: would the Fethullahçi’s message of peace, love and tolerance continue to win the heart of the Turks and the Muslim communities if Europe eventually rejected the Turkish candidature, or if the Prime Minister Erdogan, or his successor, decided by resentment to leave the negotiation table? The new “spring” for the humanity that Gülen says he anticipates, this “age of tolerance and understanding that will lead to cooperation among civilizations and their ultimate fusion into one body”[16], seems, in some respects, conditioned by the future outcome of some political stakes, such as the success of the membership process of Turkey to join EU. At the same time, a movement like that of Gülen represents an important vector for the progress forces and the “enlightened” reform. As Lester Kurtz underlines[17] : if humanity is to live for another century (…) the voices coming from such faith communities as Gulen’s, would undoubtedly play a part in that”.

Notes
[1] Andrew Mango, The Turks Today, Woodstock (New York), The Overlook Press, 2004, p.130
[2] Saïd Nursi ( 1877-1961 ) was the spiritual guide of the movement Risale-i Nur (“letters of light”), otherwise known as “Nur movement”. According to him, there are no contradictions between Islam on one hand, and reason, science and modernity on the other one because scientific discoveries are only “proving” the greatness of God. To fight against ignorance, poverty and internal dissension, he recommends inter-religious cooperation.
[3] Interview published on 7/30/2004 in Kenya’s Daily Nation and reproduced by the Fethullah Gülen’s website: http://en.fgulen.com/a.page/press/interview/p1821.html
[4] The latest, organized on November 12-13, 2005 at the University Rice of Houston (Texas) by three local institutions connected to the interfaith dialogue, was about the “Views and Practices of Fethullah Gülen and the movement of Gülen”.
[5] Bulent Aras and Ömer Caha (“Fethullah Gulen and his Liberal ‘Turkish Islam’ Movement”, MERIA Journal, Vol. 4, No. 4, December 2000) underline that the organizational structure of the community is very hierarchical and not fully democratic because numerous followers are excluded from the decision-making process.
[6] In October 1996, the Gulen’s supporters financed disinterestedly a development bank, Asya Finans, with the support of 16 partners and a 125 million dollar capital. Its purpose is to raise capital so that the Turkish businessmen invest in Turkic republics.
[7] Date of the officialization of the beginning of the negotiations process with the European Union.
[8] Erhan Basyurt, “Will Europe Make a Historic Mistake ?”, Zaman (English version), 9/24/2005
[9] Ekrem Dumanli, “European Union is Playing with Fire”, Zaman (English version), 9/24/2005
[10] Erhan Basyurt, “Will Europe Make a Historic Mistake ?”, Zaman (English version), 9/24/2005
[11] M. Nedir Hazar, “October 3 is not the End of the Word”, Zaman (English version), 10/3/2005
[12] Abdulhamit Bilici, “What is France’s Problem with Turkey ?”, Zaman (English version), 9/6/2005
[13] Abdulhamit Bilici, “Why is it so Difficult with the EU ?”, Zaman (English version), 9/29/2005
[14] M. Nedir Hazar, “October 3 is not the End of the Word”, Zaman (English version), 10/3/2005
[15] Karim Balci, “European Citizenship and Us”, Zaman (English version), 11/7/2005
[16] “Fethullah Gulen’s Web Site : Further Remarks” : http://en.fgulen.com/a.page/life/biography/p756.html
[17] Lester R. Kurtz, “Gülen’s paradox : Combining Commitments and Tolerance”, The Muslim World, Vol. 95 No. 3, p.381