Thursday, May 07, 2009

Fethullah Gülen: the Turkish Khomeini?


Jihad Watch

Building his empire in Philadelphia. Is he planning to return to establish Sharia rule in Ankara? "Fethullah Gülen: the neo-Ottoman dream of Turkish Islam," by Geries Othman for AsiaNews, May 6 (thanks to Alexandre): Ankara (AsiaNews) – Atatürk’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 Erdoğan, 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 Gülen, who is seen a the most important modern Muslim theologian and political scientist today.

Son of an imam, Gülen 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....

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 Erdoğan (one of Gülen’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, Gülen 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 Gülen’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 Gülen 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.
Thanks also to Asia News

5 comments:

ertank said...

Gulen is being used by consecutive US administrations for decades. At first, he was the appointed person to indoctrinate Islam and Turkishness in post-Sovietic countries so that they would be away from Russia's scope of effect. In the meantime, he was allowed to play with big money, and to grow inside Turkey as well, to the extent that his devoted followers are everywhere in various critical positions. Don't you think that, as a person living in the US, he wouldn't be 'neutralised' if the US administration would have thought of him as an Islamist danger similar to Khomeini?

GS Don Morris, Ph.D./Chana Givon said...

NO! And you know why!

Anonymous said...

NO, million times NO. I recommend visiting one of those islamic! schools (the writer thinks that they are islamic) There are too many of them in the world, there should be one that is probably close to you. After questioning the Turkish people who are working there and learning a little insight about why they are there, come back and write your article again. This whole article is only an example of a biased opinion of people whom doesn't want to see anyone having such an effect on the world other then themselves in which they think they might not be able to control in the future.

GS Don Morris, Ph.D./Chana Givon said...

Anonymous, another one with the same name,
One question, do you deny the doctrine of religion and state as one?

ohohmrbill said...

My name is Bill. I have had forst hand wxperiance with one of hid charter schools. In one news article we can see a history was fired becuased he wanted to teach the Holocaust to his pupils. Which leads me to another question, Darwinism. Will they deny our students on the theory of evulution as well?