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Chapter 2: The Emergence of the Hizmet Movement I. Introduction
This chapter aims to examine the identity of the Hizmet movement through a deep exploration of the historical, political, and philosophical roots that brought it into existence and shaped it throughout time, while it also tries to show the results of directly communicating with individuals who comprise the movement contemporarily, so as to examine the movement’s identity from multiple perspectives and selfhoods. It was found that Hizmet was a much more complex, historically and politically shaped phenomenon, whose discourses, actions, and popularity could not be limited to solely Islamic motivations, but also reflected political, social, and historical circumstances and conditions.
In this chapter, the social and political context within which the movement emerged and evolved to understand Gülen’s ideas and the movement’s activism will be discussed. Thus it is necessary to analyze what social and political context shaped Gülen’s generation, what were the social, religious and political problems in Gülen’s time, and why did the movement emerge and what did it stand for?
Following the study of historical and socio-political context of the Gülen movement, the expansion of the movement and its Hizmet discourse will be dealt with.
Here, the worldwide proliferation and institutionalization of the movement shall be analyzed how it changed from a national movement into a transnational one by opening institutions internationally and gaining followers and sympathizers from several nationalities. Thereafter, the major conceptions and ideological elements of the movement could be clarified. In addition, it will discuss the fundamental intellectual principles of the Gülen movement.
II. The Ottoman Legacy
The Hizmet movement that was influenced by Turkey’s exceptional experiences is regarded as a Turkish social movement. In order to gain a broader understanding of the Hizmet movement in Turkey and the Turkish people’s attitudes towards it, it is needed to look back in Turkish socio-historical context that shaped the movement. Turkey is the
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most Westernized and secular democratic Muslim country. It is a member of NATO, and a US ally. The political system of Turkey is noted and appreciated by its people. It can be deemed a unique state in the Middle East.
The history of Turks in Asia goes back to 10th century. Comparing with the Arabs, the Turks were latecomer Muslims. They established one of the world’s most powerful empires, first the Seljuk sultanate which was ended in the 13th century and was followed by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire ruled over three continents between the thirteenth and the twentieth centuries.14
Responding to the European modernization, the Ottomans launched her Tanzimat in the 18th century, which failed to modernize the country and was resulted in the founding of the secular Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The primary goal of the modernizers had been the preservation of the state against the collapse of the empire.
The roots of the secular movement went back to the mid-nineteenth century at the time of Tanzimat. The most important of all the Ottoman reforms would be the “meşrutiyet”, constitutional monarchy. The next decade in the Ottoman history is called “The Era of Second Meşrutiyet,” and was a period when a proto-democracy with a diverse parliament and multi-party system emerged. Western concepts such as constitutionalism, democracy, and equality by law were thus introduced to the traditional Islamic society through the process of modernization as early as the 19th century. It is why the Islamic movements that would unfold in Republican Turkey would be much more democratic in nature as compared with some of their Middle Eastern counterparts.
There were more than twenty ethnic communities living in the Ottoman lands, speaking dozens of languages. Christianity and Judaism, with their various sects and denominations, were the most prevalent religions after Islam in the Ottoman State.
The 18th century discovery of Europe by Ottoman bureaucrats resulted in the famous “Imperial Gülhane Decree of 1839”, also known as the Tanzimat Edict, which introduced the idea of supremacy of law and modern citizenship to the empire. In a second substantive reform edict, in 1856, the dhimmi (protected people) status was abolished, and Jews and Christians gained equal civil rights. The Tanzimat Reform
14 Leon Carl Brown,1996, Imperial Legacy: the Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East. New York:
Columbia University Press.
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involved a major reorganization at the levels of provincial administration, education and the judiciary. As the term indicated, Tanzimat involved the restructuring and re-ordering of the fundamental institutions of the Ottoman system.15
It is deemed that modernization of Turkish society began in earnest with Sultan Mahmut II’s reforms in 1826 that led to the abolition of the Janissary corps, the opening of medical and military schools, and the setting up of modern postal service. Beginning in 1839 at the end of Mahmut II’s reign, the Tanzimat period saw a series of sweeping reforms in the area of law and taxation. Then in 1856 with the Paris Treaty the Ottoman State was accepted as a European state, and in 1876 the Young Turks drew up the First Constitution and a Turkish parliament was briefly established only to be dissolved by Sultan Abdulhamit II in the following year. In 1908 the sultan was forced to accept constitutional rule, parliament was restored and then a year later Abdulhamit II was deposed by the Young Turks who then seized power to set up a modern constitutional state. The final form of the modern Turkey was only realized after World War I.
However, the modernization began much earlier, The Ottoman State is easy to criticize from a contemporary vantage point but judged alongside other political entities of its time, it was, in many respects, more modern than its contemporaries. Compared with most of its contemporaries, it was open to new ideas and new ways of doing things and was comfortable with social and cultural pluralism.
The Ottoman reforms were articulated and carried out by the intellectual elites of the State. Generally speaking most of them were well versed in European thought.
Among them were different trends. One of these was the so-called “modernization within the tradition” trend. Its proponents realized the need for reforms, but hoped to realize these without abandoning traditional values, and especially the Islamic ones. The second trend was “modernization despite the tradition”, which found its most radical expressions.
According to the historian Şükrü Hanioğlu, “the Young Turk ideology, as it developed between 1889 and 1902 was severely antireligious, viewing religion as the greatest obstacle to human progress”.16
15 Mehmet Ali Kilicbay, 1989, Tanzimat Neyi Tanzim Etti. Ago 4’, November, 15, pp. 57-63.
In later years, the Youg Turks played down their secular views for political purposes.
16Şükrü Hanioğlu, 2001, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908, Oxford University Press, p, 305.
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The Ottoman state defined its subjects according to their religious affiliations.
This system, called the millet (community), defined each religious community as a separate community. The millet system had a socio-cultural and communal framework based firstly on religion, and secondly on ethnicity.17 Each millet established and maintained its own institutions, such as education, religion, legal principles pertaining to civil and family laws and social welfare.18 The millet system allowed Greek Orthodox Christians, Jews and Armenians to form their own ethnic-religious communities and to establish independent religious institutions in Istanbul. “Istanbul became the centre of Muslim-Christian co-existence which lasted for over five hundred years.”19 All of these policies and practices indicate that the dominant perception of religion and culture in the Ottoman Empire developed in such a way that a formula enabling different religious communities to live together with the “other”. Minority’s access to autonomy and freedom in the Ottoman state attracted large numbers of displaced Jewish communities who were the victims of persecution in Spain, Poland, Austria, Russia, Romania and most of the Balkan states. They had suffered from persecution due to anti-Jewish laws, and they enjoyed an atmosphere of tolerance and justice in the territory.20
Religion during the Ottoman State was adopted as a governmental tool of cultural conciliation, which was used to intermediate between the state and the community. For centuries the Ottomans were a strong imperial polity that claimed Islam as their main source of political legitimacy. The sultans saw themselves as the rulers of the empire, but also the caliph, the leader of all the Sunni community. Islam in political history of the Turks, during the reigns of both the Seljuks and the Ottomans, remained under the state’s guidance to be practiced in the private sphere. The dominant belief was that a truly Islamic sultan would govern the state according to the principles of justice, equality, and piety. This approach of keeping religion apart from worldly affairs led to a collective Later, Turkey continued this tradition by sheltering many Jews who fled Nazi oppression.
17 Kemal Karpat, 1982, Millets and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and State in the Post Ottoman Era. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Volume I, The Central Lands. London, p.141.
18 Stanford Show,1977, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Cambridge University Press, p. 151.
19 Alexsis, Alexandres, 1983, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations 1918-1974. Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, p. 21.
20 Paul Dumont,1982, “Jewish Communities in Turkey During the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.” In Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society Edited by B. Braude and B. Lewis. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, pp.221-22.
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memory that regarded Islam as a flexible system of faith tolerance. The relationship between the state and religion was relatively harmonious during the Ottoman rules, although certainly, local problems cropped up at various times.
Despite the advances it had made, the Ottoman Empire collapsed immediately after the First World War. The Republic was established on the legacy of multiethnic and multi-religious empire. This brings out the question of how far modern Turkey inherited the culture co-existence and what new instruments it developed to consolidate this culture.
Political power of the Turks, and their continual interaction with the West, gave them important insight. The Ottoman elites had to rule an empire by making practical decisions, adopting new technologies, and reforming existing structures, all of which allowed them to understand and cope with secular realities. Sociologist Şerif Mardin calls this experience “Turkish-Islamic Exceptionalism,” which is overlooked by most contemporary Western scholars on Islam because of their “concentration on Arab or Salafi Islam.”21
The fall of the Ottoman state is often blamed, among other factors, on the abuse of Islam. At least one expert posits this caused Turkey to “wash its hands off religion.”
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21Şerif Mardin, 2005, “Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in Operational Codes.” Turkish Studies, summer, 6 (2), p.145.
Regardless of whether he was influenced by the history of the empire, Ataturk believed in secularism. Therefore, in the new nation of Turkey he governed and imposed strict separation between the mosque and state. This principle is called laiklik (secularism) in Turkish, which is generally regarded as the separation of religion and state. However, secularism actually denotes the subordination of religion to the state. Secularism has become a hallmark of Turkish governance, and there are large segments of the population referred to secularists, who feel strongly about strict adherence to this principle. There are two groups of avowed secularists who believe it is their duty and right to protect what they see as the critical legacy of Ataturk, a secular Turkey. First, there is group of secularists in Turkey commonly referred to the “deep state” which is a behind-the-scenes, elite group of bureaucrats, military brass and other members of high society. Some analysts contend that this group has “controlled the country and manipulated the political
22 Scott Peterson, 1998, “Struck Down in Turkey, Islam Coils.” The Christian Science Monitor, 90, no.37, p. 6.
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system” for the past fifty years.23
The foundation of the Turkish republic in the beginning of the 1920s displaced the caliphate which embodied all Muslim political existence, and declined the Ottoman body politic. The state elites tried to secure the system they were structuring through a series of secularist legal regulations. The disembodiment of the caliphate and the reform of the new republican regime meant the decline of Islam’s role in the public sphere. The Ministry of Shariah and Evkaf were abolished in 1924, and under the Unification of Education Law in 1924 all madrasah (Islamic schools) were closed. Sufi orders and all religious practices affiliated with them were banned by law in 1925, and religious manifestations became illegal. Changing the Osmani Arabic script was Latinized with Roman alphabets, the new generation of Turks was thus cut off from the literate heritage of their forebears, and by ordering men of religion to perform the call of prayer in Turkish rather than Arabic, nationalism was hence chosen as the unifying source among people; others’ proposals were also rejected to codify the ideology of the state. In 1928, the designation of Islam as the Religion of the state was removed from the national constitution, and Kemalist secularism was officially designated as the religion of the state.
Second and much more overtly, the Turkish military sees itself as the ultimate guarantor of the secular Turkish state, and has taken action consistent with this duty. Explicitly confirming their view as the party, the Turkish military is principally responsible for upholding secularism.
As it stands, despite some isolated events, Turkey succeeds in managing religious diversity because the perception of Islam has developed in connection with a variety of current and historical events. The perception that emerged in the course of Turkish social, cultural and political history provides strong grounds for peaceful co-existence within the shared social order. Turkey’s achievement in establishing a political culture and a perception of Islam that facilitates religious pluralism can be attributed to numerous factors. These factors range from democracy and secularism, to the perception of Islam and Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union. However it should be noted that, although Turkey has achieved considerable success, improvement in these areas is still needed.
The Turkey leader Ataturk, sought to remove religion from the public and social
23 Carol Migdalovitz, 2010, “Turkey: Politics of Identity and Power.” Congressional Research Service, p. 9.
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realm, “to confine it to the conscience of people,” and to make it a set of beliefs that would not go beyond their personal lives. Thus his aim was to reduce religion to a matter of individual faith and prayer. Hence forward, the principle of freedom of religion and conscience was to protect only individualized religion and prayers. Religion remained to be a personal issue and state intervention was necessary only if it concerned and objectified the social order.24 Ataturk stated this clearly: “We get our inspirations not from the heavens or invisible things but directly from life.”25
The republic was ruled by a single party between 1923 and 1946. The first competitive elections were held in 1946. In 1950, for the first time in the country’s history, democratic elections were held. In 1950, the Republican People’s Party (CHP in Turkish) that had been in power since 1923 lost; and a newly established Democrat Party under the leadership of Adnan Menderes won the election. After the Democrat Party had ruled the country for about ten years, the military incited by the Kemalist elites and the media, staged a coup d’état in 1960, arresting Prime Minister Menderes and his ministers, hanging them on the grounds that they had “taken the country backward” and on corruption charges which later turned out to be baseless. Roots of this event extend back to the Kemalist elite’s self-claimed ownership of the country and all national authority.
The statement by the CHP’s governor of Ankara explains that “any change Turkish society will undergo, has to be decided by the ruling elite.” Menderes’ democratic stance on the issue of religious freedom was enough to classify him as an enemy of the secular state. In fact, until very recently, the military controlled the system through the National Security Council, a half-military half-civilian organism in charge of defending the spirit of the secular republic; this council had the power to force ministers to implement certain policies and the legitimacy to instigate a coup whenever it was believed necessary, which occurred three times in the history of the Turkish republic, in 1960, 1971, 1980. For this reason, one of the most controversial issues in recent Turkish politics has been the relations of religion, secularism and the state.
24 Jose Casanova, 1994, Public Religions in the Modern World. University Of Chicago Press, pp.17-39, and
“privatization of religion” see Thomas Luckmann, 1967, The Invisible Religion. MacMillan Publishing Company by adopting the right to individual belief, “a product of the only legitimate space (that was) allowed to Christianity by post-Enlightenment society” (Talal Asad, 1993, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 45).
25 Kemal Ataturk, 1925, Soylev ve Demecler, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayını. p.389.
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A new middle class became visible from the 1980s.26 While accepting traditional ethical standards and cultural values of Islam, the “rational” business rules and the profit motive of the capitalist market system was also adopted.27 Although coming not exactly from the same spiritual and philosophical sources, many of the cadres of the ruling AKP Justice and Development Party,28 as well as many followers of Gülen, would fall into this category.29 Most Islamic entrepreneurs are the first generation of college graduates, children of petty bourgeoisies who benefited from Turgut Özal’s30 neo-liberal economic policies in the 1980s and early 1990s. These policies had the effect of increasing such people’s social mobility, allowing them to establish their own medium-sized and small-sized firms.31
In 2002, the Turkish Parliament adopted a series of legislative and constitutional amendments that took effect in 2003. Moreover, since the 1980s, in the government of Özal, social activities have increased and diversified. Among the actors of the blooming civil society, the pro-Islamic organizations have also had important influence by their support in the cultural re-Islamilization of the society within the constraints of its secular political system. When Özal served as the prime minister in the 1980s, the policies of socio-economic liberalization were carried out to trigger the rise of Islamic-oriented activities and lifestyles that the Kemalist ideology had tried to eradicate since the beginning of the Republic in the 1920s. The Islamic movement relied on people either in
In 2002, the Turkish Parliament adopted a series of legislative and constitutional amendments that took effect in 2003. Moreover, since the 1980s, in the government of Özal, social activities have increased and diversified. Among the actors of the blooming civil society, the pro-Islamic organizations have also had important influence by their support in the cultural re-Islamilization of the society within the constraints of its secular political system. When Özal served as the prime minister in the 1980s, the policies of socio-economic liberalization were carried out to trigger the rise of Islamic-oriented activities and lifestyles that the Kemalist ideology had tried to eradicate since the beginning of the Republic in the 1920s. The Islamic movement relied on people either in