Fethullah Gülen

Fethullah Gülen (born April 27, 1941, Korucuk, Turkey—died October 20, 2024, Pennsylvania) was a Turkish Islamic scholar and spiritual leader of a movement for social and civic reform, known as the Hizmet (“service”) movement or the Gülen movement.

Early life and teachings

Gülen was a staunch supporter of Islam’s presence in the public sphere and believed it is essential to the formation of an ideal society. He advocated both personal transformation and active participation in social and political issues. He fully embraced Turkish nationalism, in which Islam rather than nationality serves as the defining characteristic, while promoting economic neoliberalism and highlighting the significance of Turkey’s Ottoman legacy.

Gülen’s social and civic views were heavily influenced by the historical context in which he grew up. He was born into a religious family and community at a time when the Turkish government was strongly committed to secularist principles. His perspective was further shaped by the encroaching expansion of the Soviet Union, as well as by the conflicts in the Balkans between Muslims and Christians.

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While attending a private religious school, Gülen encountered the works of Said Nursi, whose teachings had taken hold in many Turkish religious circles at the time. Nursi’s movement, known as the Nur movement, advocated harmony between Islam and modernity as a response to the ongoing social changes in Turkey. Nursi promoted knowledge, education, and spirituality, while emphasizing Islam’s compatibility with science and encouraging his followers to embrace both faith and reason.

In 1958, after graduating from a private religious school, Gülen became licensed as an imam. In 1966 he relocated to İzmir, where he established a network of boarding houses known as ışık evleri (“lighthouses”) that assisted students with their education. Over time he and his supporters established schools, charitable organizations, and numerous civil society organizations, which were meant to educate individuals to serve in bureaucratic and civil service positions. As the state loosened its control over religious expression in the 1980s, Gülen amassed a substantial following in Turkey.

Hizmet movement

Gülen’s followers came to refer to their faith-based civil society movement as Hizmet, which literally translates to “service.” The movement’s teachings promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue, science, democracy, and spirituality, while condemning violence and the politicization of religion. The movement lacks a formal structure or organization, its institutions and members are only loosely affiliated, and Gülen did not oversee its operations directly. It has been critical of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), especially in relation to Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism in the 2010s.

The Hizmet movement operates a loose global network of private and public schools. These schools, which number well over 1,000 in Turkey and abroad, adhere to the secular curriculum that is set by the country’s government. They uphold rigorous academic standards grounded in Islamic doctrine and conduct. Teachers are expected to model moral and ethical development for their students and serve as role models.

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Neither Gülen nor his movement openly pursued any organized political involvement or parliamentary representation in Turkey. He and his followers were early allies of the AKP and Erdoğan, and they were instrumental in the AKP’s rise to power. The movement flourished alongside the AKP, but the apparent role of Hizmet movement members in exposing corruption among AKP politicians in 2013 prompted Erdoğan (then prime minister) to limit their influence. The AKP linked a coup attempt in 2016 to Gülen’s followers, and the Hizmet movement was soon thereafter dubbed the “Fethullah Terror Organization (FETO)” by the government. Over the years that followed, Erdoğan conducted a wide purge, arresting tens of thousands of people and removing more than 100,000 people from their jobs—including police officers, soldiers, academics, and civil servants—over accusations that they might have been sympathetic to the coup. The connection of many of them to the Hizmet movement was dubious.

Exile

Gülen traveled to the United States in 1999, citing medical treatment as the purpose of his visit. After he arrived, a video surfaced in the Turkish press in which he was shown advising his followers to quietly “move in the arteries of the system…until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institution in Turkey,” although he subsequently claimed the video was manipulated. He remained in the United States, and in 2008 he obtained a green card. Residing in Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains, he led a largely reclusive existence and rarely interacted with the media, communicating with his followers primarily through sermons and publications.