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IV. Development of the Hizmet Movement
The Gülen-inspired movement has undergone change and transition. It can be categorized into three main successive development stages since its inception in the 1960s. The first and initial period would be from the 1960s until 1980 and that could be characterized as a time for “Community Building” by Gülen and his close followers. In this period, Gülen gave numerous talks, sermons 44
The second stage of the movement began from 1983 to 1997 when Gülen retired as a state preacher. Throughout the 1980s, Gülen and members of the new Anatolian bourgeoisie inspired by his teachings, began to focus on and to invest in “educational projects” attainment in Turkey by establishing primary and secondary schools, providing dormitories for college students and learning institutions with a focus on achievements in math and science while creating strong relationship between dedicated teachers and their pupils across Anatolia.
and a series of conference speeches organized by his followers and sympathizers. This enabled him to reach broader community of the different population, and to attract the attention of the academic community, especially the students. He also put great efforts to the foundation of student-dormitories and establishing “Işık Evler” (Light Houses) in various provinces in Anatolia.
The objective behind Light Houses is to provide students with a home, a network of friends and daily routine, which makes it easier for them to abstain from indulging in religiously immoral acts, and to keep up spiritual lifestyle.
The movement’s focus in the past four decades was to address local needs with universal human values. At the end of the 1960s, in Turkey there was a great need for better educational opportunities all over the country. Not only was there great room for improvement in terms of educational quality, but education was also not available to every child. Although the state worked hard to deal with both matters, more could have been done. Gülen and those inspired followers, showed an excellent example of civic engagement by providing solution to these two crucial issues of Turkey’s secondary school education system.
44 Most of Gülen’s series sermons, talks, and public speeches were recorded and transliterated into text format and with minor review published as books. This form of delivery was unheard of in the Muslim scholarly world where custom had it that matters should be studied and presented in a rather loose-haphazard-style with no clear boundary.
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To address this shortcoming, they put together the first project of what would be later called Hizmet movement, which at that time comprised few university students and a handful of small-business owners. The project’s aim was to find ways to accommodate out-of-town students in whose hometowns there school was not available, or set up a good one. At the beginning, the project started by the aforementioned students and businessmen set aside funds from their own pockets for educational and living expenses of these out-of-town students, and built dormitories in which these students could live while away from their families.
These dormitories also served as shelters against bad behaviors like drug abuse and involvement in political violent extremism. That is why many families, during those years and later, considered the Gülen movement the best tool to protect their children.
Eventually, the project proved to be successful as the number of such out-of-town students grew and the number of followers increased. As these students were closely watched for their schoolwork, graduates became very successful in college entrance exams, and went on to the best universities in Turkey. In just over a decade, families who never planned to send their children to a middle school now had their children attending the best universities. This immense success opened up the doors for further projects. In addition to schools, the 1970s also marked the beginnings of college entrance examination preparation institutions.
Students of Hizmet proved to be successful in their social lives. They were educated to with the idea of living for others, being self-sacrificial and hard working.
They were free of bad habits like smoking and drinking, and protected from religious radicalism and violent political movements. Although schools are run by Hizmet inspired people, they observe state regulations of education. In the meantime, Gülen and the participants of Hizmet started to work on a new project, which turned out to be highly influential in today’s Turkey. As they saw a need for publications to promote values, the first monthly magazine of science and culture- Sızıntı came in 1979, and then Zaman in 1987, which is now most widely circulated and read newspaper.
According to J. Hendrick, “the expansion of the Gülen movement in the early 1980s was the result of two structural opportunities opened under the Özal regime (1983-1993). First Turkey’s economic liberalization schemes gave rise to a conservative central
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Anatolian bourgeoisie. Second, the 1982 constitution opened up new spaces for social and religious organizing. Such social reforms opened doors for previously restricted religious expression, and led to religious revival throughout the country.”45
According to Atasoy, Özal’s Mother Land Party contained strong pro-Islamic faction. This provided the linkage of Muslim cultural values with economic development.
“The political decision to develop a religious educational system played a significant role in the creation of a new genre of Muslim professionals employed mainly as engineers in the state bureaucracy and private sector. These professionals were the children of religiously minded rural small producers and urban lower classes.”
In a complex set of ramifications, space for an expansion of moderate Islamic expression was cleared in the early 1980s. This was, by coincidence, the very period when Gülen and his early circle were poised to take their activities to a new level.
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On the whole, this was the period of negotiating a new national culture that reincorporated religion. Religion as a subject could now be taught in the state schools. An explosion of private religious education was also taking place. However, the strategy of the Hizmet schools was not to promote religious education. Rather, the focus was on proficiency in science and mathematics in particular, the skills needed for a prosperous and successful modernity. At the same time a concern with the moral formation of students was to be addressed by dedicated teachers who would befriend and advise their students as true older siblings.
Islam was the central focus and framework of the Gülen movement; however, the movement’s actions of engaging with the neoliberal economy after the mid-1980s (by opening financial institutions, schools, TV stations, newspapers, magazines, and ex pushed the Cemaat move towards the market demands. However, through this engagement with the market, the movement’s slogans, symbols, characteristics, and structure began to change, they had to adapt to and use concepts related with the neoliberal economy, such as democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, and pluralism.
According to Hakan Yavuz, the movement also became more intolerant towards other
45 Joshua D. Hendrick, 2007, “The Regulated Potential of Kinetic Islam: Antithesis in Global Islamic Activism.” In Robert A. Hunt & Yuksel Asladogan (Eds), Muslim Citizes of a Gloalized World: Contributins of the Gülen Movement Somerset NJ: Light, p.23.
46 Yildiz Atasoy, 2005, Turkey, Islamists, and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State. London: I.
B. Taurus, p. 154.
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political, religious and social groups and now seeks economic power and a greater share of the market. This transformation can be described as a neoliberal version of Islam without the underlying principles of Islam. As the movement began to invest and operate within the market value, it also began to adapt its principles and actions to the imperatives of the market economy, and in so doing, became less religious.
The third phase commenced in the 1990s and extends to the present time.
Internationalization of the movement began with an expansion of business and educational projects into the Turkish speaking ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia. In the 1990s, political and economic developments in Turkey, the fall of the Soviet Union, the structural weakening of the Turkish state monopoly over information and capital flows, and global developments in communication and transformation technology all contributed to an emphasis being placed on international educational encounters and dialogue activities among the adherents of different religions, nations and civilizations.
Following the collapse of Soviet Union, Hizmet movement realized a great need for education in the newly formed Turkic countries. With the same ideas and similar methods, volunteers of the movement showed great civic engagement, this time at an international level, to establish schools just like those in Turkey. This required great self-sacrifice as hundreds of newly college graduates and small-business owners left their country to Turkic countries to realize their ideas of education. These educational institutions were well received, and also supported by the Turkish state and local provinces; the Hizmet movement became internationally known and appreciated. This led more volunteers to work in many different countries where better education is needed.
Similar schools were established to fulfill the Gülen’s ideology. Today, Hizmet inspired schools can be seen in more than 150 countries. They are all regulated by state officials, and run by local and independent board of directors that comprise of Hizmet inspired individuals as well as those who are not.
Starting in the early 1990s, Gülen was the first spiritual leader in Turkey to express his views on the necessity of interfaith dialogues, which promote peace among the factions of different ideologies, faiths and cultures.47
47Yavuz Hakan, 2003, Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
In the 1990s, one could easily
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observe that in Turkey, many different franctions of the social, political and cultural life were in strong conflict with each other, or it seemed to be so. Leftist/rightist, Sunni/Alevi Turkish/Kurdish, religious/secular, and liberal/conservative among many others seemed to be forming the conflictual ends of sociocultural and sociopolitical fabric of the country.
There were countless misconceptions and stereotypical essentializations about each other.
Most importantly, the divisions seemed to deepen day after day. Well before the significant increase in dialogue activities in the post-9/11 world, Gülen had established the “Journalists and Writers Foundation” in 1994. It appears that from this time he intended to promote dialogue and tolerance among all strata of the society in Turkey and abroad. In the context of the “Intercultural Dialogue Platform”, Gülen has held talks with many religious leaders and institutions, such as Pope John Paul II (1998), Greek Eucumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos (1996),48
As a result of these inter-faith activities, Gülen and the movement were strongly criticized by two groups: hardline secularists and some Islamists. The two differed in the ways and reasons for which they criticized Gülen. Hardline secularists rebuked him based on the contention that in order to get into contact with other faiths’ representatives, some sort of an authorization is required. Since Gülen was not appointed by the state, he had no right to speak to someone like Pope John Paul II on his own behalf.
Sepharadic Chief Rabbi of Israel Eliyahu Bakshi Doron (1999), as well as a number of Turkish religious leaders.
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reactions to Gülen’s visit were slightly different. They considered Gülen’s initiatives as a humiliation. A Muslim should not go and visit a non-Muslim. They also believed that for such a prominent Muslim religious leader to visit other religious leaders would cause some Muslims to convert.50
Gülen’s dialogue and peaceful coexistence discourse were also replicated in institutions abroad, like the “Dialogue Society” established in 1999 in London and the
“Rumi Forum” established in 2000 in Washington DC. There are now hundreds of dialogue associations and charities all over the world founded by the movement’s Muslim and non-Muslim volunteers who are motivated by Gülen’s teachings. Through these charity institutions, these volunteers initiate and engage in interfaith and intercultural
48 For “Repercussions from Gülen–Bartholomeos Meeting,” see http://en.fgulen.com/content/category/148/252/11/
49 Necip Hablemitoglu, 1999, “28 Şubat kararları surecine bir katkı”, Yeni Hayat, Issue 52.
50Mehmet Şevket Eygi, 2000, ‘Papalıkla Gizli Anlaşma’, Milli Gazete, May 26, 2000.
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dialogues with people of different faiths and cultures. Today, around the world, through local partnerships, Hizmet volunteers are regularly co-organizing small and large-scale events and meetings in which people of various backgrounds interact with one another.
To this end, the dialogue and mutual understanding initiative is one of the cornerstones of evolution for the Gülen movement. The expansion of the Gülen movement from local to national, then to global one correlated with the developments both in Turkey and worldwide. In Central Asia with the collapse of the Soviet Union, state monopoly on economic and cultural life ended.
This decade also experienced yet another project of humanitarian aid, by establishing organizations such as “Helping Hands” and “Kimse Yok Mu”, volunteers answered this call, and started fundraising activities and relief fund efforts around the world. These organizations were able to provide millions of dollars to the areas of hunger, poverty, or areas hit by earthquakes and tsunamis. People around the world voluntarily participate in activities through such organizations. In some areas, volunteers work to build hospitals, provide food to the hungry, yet volunteer doctor’s help in health care, hundreds of Hizmet inspired volunteers work to meet the urgent needs.
Today, the movement operates within a complex and multifaceted structure.
Yavuz describes that the movement possesses three layers: “the businessmen, journalists, and teachers and students”. The movement has its hierarchical structure, and aside from the Gülen leadership, only a small group of decision makers of the Gülen community have played an important role in its development after Gülen himself moved to the U.S.
in 1997. After leaving Turkey, however, Gülen has still supervised its activities up to present day. Gülen regards himself in the movement as spiritual leader guiding his followers through his Islamic teachings.