Since its election in 2002, the
ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP), under the leadership of
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has transformed Turkey. The reforms
initiated by this conservative government with Islamic roots have amounted to a
passive revolution—they have profoundly altered Turkish society, modernized its
institutions, and strengthened its economy, which is now the sixteenth-largest
in the world in terms of GDP.
Yet it would be a mistake to
attribute the many successes that have enhanced Turkey’s role as a major
regional and international player to AKP leadership alone. Erdoğan’s government
has enjoyed support from a number of political organizations as well as from
influential religious and social forces within Turkey. The most invaluable, but
also the hardest to assess, is a movement that plays a fundamental role in
Turkey’s social and religious life: the Gülen
movement of Fethullah Gülen, referred to by the terms cemaat or hizmet.
The AKP and the Gülen movement
established an alliance in 2002 based on a common desire to push back the
central role of the military in the country and create a new, more
conservative, and more Muslim Turkey. Each brought different skills to the
task—Erdoğan and his AKP colleagues were experienced in political activism and
electoral politics, while the Gülen movement used education and social activism
to promote its objectives. This alliance was not without disagreements, but
until recently common interests outweighed differences.
During the past few months, however,
tensions have deepened between Erdoğan and the Gülenists in the realms of both
domestic and foreign policy, causing speculation that the alliance is headed
for a fundamental break. There can be no doubt that rifts have emerged over a
variety of issues, from the rising power of the Gülen movement to the
increasingly authoritarian actions of the prime minister. But talk of a
complete break may well be premature.
The
Gülen Movement
Fethullah Gülen emerged as a
religious authority in Turkey in the 1970s, and little by little he became the
spiritual leader of a vast community that now boasts an estimated 3 million
sympathizers. Gülen, who moved to the United States in 1999, encourages his
disciples to become modern, moderate Muslims. An adherent of free markets, he
champions the Islamic faith and the spirit of capitalism. He is also a
nationalist, seeking to boost Turkey’s influence and prestige abroad.
Gülen relies heavily on education to
transmit his ideas, and he has formed a network of hundreds
of schools and businesses worldwide. This
network is active on every continent, including in the United States, where
his sympathizers run approximately 130 charter schools, mainly
in Texas.
He focuses his efforts on educating
new generations and promoting the emergence of elites who are simultaneously
pious, modern, patriotic, committed to globalization, and comfortable with
economic success. Like the Jesuits and other missionaries who trained Turkey’s
republican, Kemalist elites to value secularism and follow a Western path
through the schools they founded at the end of the Ottoman Empire, Gülen
aspires to use education to help forge new generation of Anatolian,
conservative elites (or counterelites) that might play a key role in creating a
modern, more openly Islamic Turkey.
For this reason, Gülenists have
always given great importance to the training of elites. As far back as 1998, a
study on relations between Turkey and the Turkic republics of Central Asia,
where Gülen’s schools represented the best of Turkish policy in the region,
showed that Central
Asian students who were trained at Turkish police academies returned to
Central Asia very familiar with Gülen’s religious and social ideas.
After emerging from Gülen’s schools,
many of these elites have assumed key positions within the Turkish
administration. Gülen’s disciples are influential in key institutional
bureaucracies and the media. Many hold important positions in the state apparatus,
the judiciary, the educational system, and key sectors of the Turkish economy.
While the movement’s representatives do not deny the presence of sympathizers
within state structures, they insist that this is not the result of any
strategy to infiltrate the state apparatus and instead point to the fact that
these educated individuals have reached high ranks in the civil service thanks
to their work ethic and perseverance.
Political
Influence
Indeed, the Gülen movement is quick
to emphasize that it is essentially religious and social, not political. In
practice, however, Gülen’s community is interested in politics. But it must
refrain from coming across as partisan, which could divide its members, many of
whom are attracted to Gülen’s religious discourse rather than to his ideas and
political initiatives.
Still, over time the presence of
Gülen’s disciples in the state apparatus has given the movement a significant
amount of political influence, a development that may have contributed to the
AKP’s desire to form an alliance. After coming to power, the AKP offered
Gülen’s community its political and, especially, its symbolic backing, publicly
supporting his educational initiatives in Turkey and abroad. In exchange, the
AKP benefited from the social connectedness of Gülen’s movement and from the
support of the media outlets with which the movement enjoys a close
relationship.
And the alliance was based on more
than just pragmatic concerns. The AKP and the Gülen movement also share the
same social base—the rising Anatolian middle classes, which are morally
conservative, economically market-oriented, and open to globalization. In
addition, the religious conservatism of the AKP and the Gülen movement is
directed against a common enemy: the Turkish army and the bureaucracy, which
are dominated by the Kemalist intelligentsia. This has created an unwritten
pact between the two groups, bolstering their complementarity.
Gülenists have been
uncharacteristically active in the public debate on a new Turkish constitution,
advocating for a political system that is more parliamentarian than
presidential. The movement has also organized conferences and discussions in
Turkey and abroad through its prestigious Abant Platform, which aims to
strengthen democracy through dialogue.
Growing
Tensions
For nearly ten years, the alliance
between the AKP and the Gülen movement—natural and spontaneous, for the most
part—has functioned well, but it is now showing increasing fragility,
exacerbated by changes in the conditions and the sociopolitical context that
initially gave rise to it. Indeed, the raison d’être for this alliance—the
vital need for both groups to protect themselves against the Kemalist
apparatus, embodied in particular by the army—is gradually disappearing. With
support from the Gülenists, the ruling AKP has considerably reduced the role
and power of the army, which no longer enjoys the political prerogatives that
made it even recently the true power in the country. A host of other factors
have also contributed to growing tensions, and the diametrically opposed
temperaments of the two leaders—Erdoğan is impetuous and hot-tempered, and
Gülen is prophetically calm—do not facilitate dialogue.
The first rift between the AKP and
the Gülen movement was in the foreign policy arena. As prime minister, Erdoğan
has cooled relations between Turkey and Israel for political, strategic, and
ideological reasons. A crisis broke out between the two countries in May 2010
when a Turkish relief organization attempted to send a flotilla of humanitarian
aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli government’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli navy boarded several ships of the flotilla, including the Turkish
MV Mavi Marmara, and faced resistance from the activists aboard. Nine
activists, including eight Turkish nationals, were killed.
Gülen publicly disapproved of the
Turkish NGO’s initiative to break the Israeli blockade. He criticized
the Turkish government for supporting it and distanced himself from the
prime minister’s anti-Israel rhetoric. Indeed, Gülen’s community has always
refrained from strongly criticizing Israel, in part because doing so would run
counter to the ecumenical, interreligious discourse that has contributed to the
movement’s global success. This stance also reflects the fact that the Gülen
movement has a strong presence in the United States, where it enjoys backing
from many friends of Israel, and this powerful American support reinforces its influence.
Gülen’s disapproval may also reflect
the fact that the NGO that organized the flotilla, the Foundation for Human
Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, was close to the AKP and to some
extent in competition with the Gülen movement’s own activities in the social
sector.
On the domestic front, the two
organizations have begun to clash with more frequency. The Turkish media report
that the AKP government is increasingly annoyed and concerned that its
decisionmaking power and sovereignty are being challenged by the growing
influence of Gülen’s community on all government structures as well as on the
police, judiciary, and public education system. But unlike the secular
opposition, which responds vehemently to what the media call the infiltration
of state structures by Gülen’s disciples, the AKP has reacted with restraint to
avoid publicizing the emerging rivalry at the heart of the state.
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