Situating the Gülen Movement in France and in Europe

ABSTRACT

Fethullah Gülen’s Turkish socio-religious movement has been active in Europe for over a decade in the spheres of education and interfaith dialogue. Operating outside Turkey and with relative freedom of association and expression, the Gülen movement has begun to carve out its niche in European Islam. Unlike in the United States, where supporters have chartered full-time schools, members of the Gülen movement in France and Germany mostly offer after-school tutorial services. It is within these programs that Fethullah Gülen’s moral and ethical worldview is being exposed to increasing numbers of young people of mainly Turkish descent. These activities elude easy categorization as religious commitment. Yet the Gülen movement remains an Islamic organization that is directly implicated in the religious sphere because of its explicitly universalistic and humanistic approach. Rather than aiming at literally spreading the religion of Islam, the organization works to improve Islam’s public image in Western contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bayram Balcı is affiliated with CERI Sciences Po, in Paris, France. He is a founding member of the European Journal of Turkish Studies, member of the editorial board of Les Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, a French journal dedicated to Central Asian studies. He is the author of Missionnaires de l'Islam en Asie centrale: Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gülen (Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003) and co-edited China and India in Central Asia: A New ‘Great Game’? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). More recently, he has published Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus Since the Fall of the Soviet Union, in Hurst publication and he is the co-editor of Turkey’s July 15^th Coup: What Happened and Why?, with Hakan Yavuz.

Notes

1 Bayram Balci, ‘Les écoles néo-nurcu de Fethullah Gülen en Asie centrale : implantation, fonctionnement et nature du message véhiculé par le biais de la coopération éducative’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, juillet (2003), pp. 101–102. URL: http://remmm.revues.org/54.

2 Hakan Yavuz, Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement (Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 320.

3 Sukran Vahida, Ibrahim Abu Rabi (eds), Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (State University of New York, 2005), p. 420.

4 See the website of the association: http://www.tuskon.org/?lang=en.

5 See the English version of its website: http://www.gyv.org.tr/.

6 Elisabeth Özdalga, ‘Secularizing Trends in Fethullah Gülen' S Movement: Impasse or Opportunity for Further Renewal?’ Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, flight. 12:1, (2003), pp. 61–73. See also Joshua D. Hendrick, Gülen, The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World (New York: University Press, 2013), p. 292.

7 Bayram Balci, Missionnaires de l'Islam en Asie centrale : Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gülen (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003), p. 300.

8 Osman Softic, ‘What is Fethullah Gülen’s real mission?’, Open Democracy, February 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/osman-softic/what-is-fethullah-g%C3%BClen%E2%80%99s-real-mission, Or, see Maximilien Popp, ‘Altruistic Society or Sect? The Shadowy World of the Islamic Gülen Movement’, Der Spiegel, August 2012, URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/guelen-movement-accused-of-being-a-sect-a-848763.html.

9 David Tittensor, The House of Service: The Gülen Movement and Islam's Third Way (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 156–172.

10 This documentary gives a good picture of the movement in the United States: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fethullah-gulen/.

11 On this centers main activities see: http://www.rethinkinstitute.org/.

12 See their website: http://www.rumiforum.org/

13 Scott, Beauchamp, ‘120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric’, Atlantic, 12 August 2014, URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/120-american-charter-schools-and-one-secretive-turkish-cleric/375923/.

14 Samim Akgönül, ‘Appartenances et altérités chez les originaires de Turquie en France’, Hommes et migrations, 1280 (2009), pp. 34–49.

15 Ahmet Yükleyen, Localizing Islam in Europe: Turkish Islamic Communities in Germany and the Netherlands (Syracuse University Near, 2012), p. 292.

16 Istar Gözaydin, ‘Diyanet and Politics’, The Muslim World, 98:2–3, (2008), pp. 216–227.

17 Zana Çitak, ‘The Institutionalization of Islam in Europe and the Diyanet: The Case of Austria’, ORSAM, 5, 1, (July 2013), pp.167–182.

18 Curiously, the Diyanet and its European arm DITIB are in an almost constant and exclusive way, the preferred Islamic actor of the authorities of reception, in France and Germany, in particular. Thus, the DITIB was at the frontline for the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, even though not all Turkish Muslim associations in France feel that this organization applies to them. France also seeks to organize French Islam and continues to cooperate with the Diyanet, to host ‘accredited’ imams and thus avoid giving free reign to the most radical organizations. If this legitimate concern is understandable, it impedes any spontaneous or natural emergence of a French Islam truly representative of its communities and of the dynamism of the associative sphere.

19 Birol Caymaz, Les mouvements islamiques turcs à Paris (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), p. 290.

20 Samim Akgönül, op. cit.

21 Jill Irvine, ‘The Gülen Movement and Turkish Integration in Germany’, in Robert A. Hunt and Yüksel A. Aslandogan (eds) Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World: Contributions of the Gulen Movement (Somerset, NJ: Light Publisher, 2007), pp. 62–84.

22 Guillaume Perrier, ‘Une confrérie turque ouvre un collège républicain en France’, Le Monde, 29 décembre 2009, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/12/29/les-eclaireurs-de-l-islam-suscitent-la-controverse_1285751_3224.html.

23 On the actions and objectives of this association, see its website: http://www.fedif.fr/.

24 Interview with Nihat Sarier, president of this Plateforme de Paris, Paris, March 2015.

25 See http://www.plateformedeparis.fr/.

26 See this chair’s website: http://soc.kuleuven.be/web/newsitem/3/7/eng/305.

27 See the French-Turkish newspaper, Zaman France, 7 March 2013, URL: http://www.zamanfrance.fr/article/ahmet-ogras-cfcm-ne-doit-s-occuper-que-culte.

28 Fethullah Gülen’s movement has often been accused of being led astray into politics; however, the full-scale expansion of the movement, as is often the case with mystico–religious organizations, made politicization inevitable. Highly influential in Turkey and abroad, the movement could not remain a stranger to the policies of its ally Erdoğan. The distribution of administrative roles and resources in domestic politics and differences of opinion between Erdoğan and the US administration over different issues in the realm of foreign policy (in particular, over Palestine and Syria), had greatly contributed to the rift.

29 Jean-Michel Demetz, ‘Turquie : Fethullah Gülen, l'imam qui fait trembler Erdoğan’, L’Express, 15 Février 2014, URL: http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/europe/turquie-fethullah-gulen-l-imam-qui-fait-trembler-erdogan_1322805.html.

30 Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion, The United States, France, and Turkey, (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

31 See Hakan Yavuz, Bayram Balci (eds), Turkey’s July 15^th coup, What Happened and Why (Utah University Press, 2018).

32 Zia Weise, ‘Long Arm of Turkey’s Anti-Gülenist Purge’, Politico, 21 August 2017, URL: https://www.politico.eu/article/long-arm-of-turkeys-anti-gulenist-purge/.

33 Bayram Balci, Gulen movement and Turkish soft power, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2014, URL: http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/02/04/g-len-movement-and-turkish-soft-power-pub-54430.