The Gülen Movement and the Transfer of a Political Conflict from Turkey to Senegal

ABSTRACT

By 2013 the Gülen movement had opened over 100 schools in 50-odd countries across Africa. In so doing, it relied on collaboration with the AKP government, with each benefiting from the other’s support. But this strategic alliance came to an end, and the crisis became international, when conflict flared up between the two in December 2013, especially in the wake of the failed coup of 15 July 2016, attributed by the AKP-government to what it calls the ‘Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü’. The Turkish government has sought to expand its repression of the Gülen movement to Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries that are politically weakest and most dependent economically are, I suggest, more likely to follow Turkey’s recommendations. The Gülen schools in Africa were supposed to be taken over by a Turkish semi-public agency, the Maarif Foundation. One country that agreed to close the schools was Senegal, which I take as a case-study, arguing that transnational social movements based on secrecy and informality—while more exposed to the spread of repression—are also better suited to local re-appropriation and reconfiguration.

Introduction

By 2013, the Gülen Movement had over 100 schools in 50-odd countries across Africa and was collaborating closely with the Turkish state on the ground. But as of 2013, its relationship with the AKP government changed drastically, and in several African countries the schools are in the process of being closed or transferred to other authorities. This article will examine this abrupt shift and its consequences.

The Gülen movement is a faith-based group that developed a multi-sectoral network both in Turkey and abroad, and whose followers started to settle in Sub-Saharan Africa as of the late 1990s. They were businessmen, travelling back and forth between Turkey and Africa, who joined the umbrella-association, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (Türkiye İşadamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu, TUSKON) as of its creation in 2005 as well as expatriate administrators and teachers in Gülen schools, and lobbyists from the interreligious dialogue platforms in each African country of settlement, connected to the Gazeteciler ve Yazarlar Vakfı (Journalist and Writers Foundation) in Turkey. Schools were—and still are—the centre of gravity for these followers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Gülen Movement is unusual in the sociology of transnational social movements for its informality and its culture of secrecy. Due to the historical repression of religious communities in Turkey, and to the movement’s transnational expansion strategies, it is characterized by its lack of any formalized, commonly known national or international hierarchy. It has no proclaimed authority (Fethullah Gülen denies being the leader of a religious movement), and there are no legal links between the schools, business associations, and religious dialogue platforms. This results in what I call ‘ambiguous identification’. This draws extensively on Joshua Hendrik’s use of the concept of ‘strategic ambiguity’ to describe the Gülen Movement’s modus operandi.¹ He defines it as a strategic variation in the discourse and practice promoted by core followers, depending on the public they are targeting. Developing this, I propose the idea of ‘ambiguous identification’ to apprehend interactions between the various social groups forming the Gülen movement. This does not presuppose any intentionality linked to a ‘strategy’ (while leaving that possibility open), and further makes it possible to examine the ‘working misunderstandings’ within an informal institution. ‘Working misunderstandings’ are defined by Jean-François Bayart as the fact that individuals from different backgrounds, with different expectations and objectives, can come together in shared activities.²

Ambiguous identification stemming from the informality of the Gülen movement and its culture of secrecy takes several forms. At times followers working in Gülen schools and associations deny the existence of a specifically international movement. For instance, the schools established by its followers are not presented as belonging to a transnational Islamic network, but as local organizations with no links binding them worldwide. As such, up until 2013 they were often not identified by African students, their parents, and the African authorities as belonging to a transnational Muslim network. Furthermore, the Gülen movement disregards claims of its political nature and denies it is in any way contentious. It has been never directly involved in politics and never founded a political party, either in Turkey or elsewhere.³ Yet it has had informal ties to several Turkish political parties, and has thus worked in various social sectors alongside the Turkish state over several periods of time, both in Turkey and abroad,.

From 2003 to 2013, the Gülen movement relied on cooperation with the AKP government, with each benefiting from the other’s support. Business and education acted as stepping-stones towards strengthening diplomatic relations between Ankara and the Sub-Saharan region. Thus, the African authorities perceived private organizations set up by the Gülen Movement (schools, business associations, dialogue platforms) as bridges for deepening their relationship with the Turkish state. African authorities viewed public and private actors from Turkey as part of the same coalition. But this strategic alliance between the Gülen movement and the AKP came to an end in Turkey when conflict flared up between the two in December 2013, and especially after the failed coup of 15 July 2016, attributed by the government to what it calls the ‘Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü’ (‘FETÖ’). The crisis acquired an international dimension, notably through its transfer to Sub-Saharan Africa.

This article analyses the repression affecting the Gülen Movement in Sub-Saharan Africa. Given the organizational characteristics of this transnational religious network, and the abrupt change in its relations with the AKP government in the region, it is interesting to focus on how its repression has been transferred from Turkey to Sub-Saharan Africa.⁴

This article addresses a common topic in international relations, namely how states relate to transnational actors.⁵ It examines the governmentality regime of the Turkish state beyond its borders, by exploring how it governs its diaspora—with the Gülen movement now constituting an ‘undesired diaspora’.⁶ Equally, it enquires into how transnational networks operate in times of crisis.⁷

What does Turkish government action to repress the Gülen Movement in African countries tell us about relations between state and civil society in a globalized world? Repression has forced the Gülen movement to adapt its modus operandi in order to survive. What does this tell us about the organizational form of transnational private actors? What light can it shed on how such actors address issues of accountability in different national frameworks?

This paper sets out two main arguments. First, concerning the specific organizational rationale of a deliberately informal transnational social movement, I argue that, in times of crisis, informality can be both a weakness and a strength. A weakness, in that it accelerates the denunciation and repression by outside authorities; and a strength, in that it allows different publics to engage with the movement in new ways based on ‘operative misunderstandings’.

Second, I argue that the Turkish state has developed new ways of governing its ‘undesired diaspora’. These imitate the action of the social movement being combated, as a result of path dependence. Turkey has relied on state-to-state relations with African countries, and so the transfer of repression has been influenced by dissymmetric state relations.

There are several reasons why Sub-Saharan Africa provides an interesting viewpoint for examining how the Turkish state relates to private transnational actors. First, followers of the Gülen movement settled in Sub-Saharan Africa as of the late 1990s, when Ankara did not have a specific African foreign policy—something which was only drawn up by the AKP-government from 2003 onwards. The Gülen movement thus preceded the Turkish state in the region. Second, until recently the Gülen movement was virtually the sole private Turkish actor in the region. Thus in the 2000s Turkey’s economic, diplomatic and cultural policy in Africa was coproduced by a coalition of public and private actors, in which the Gülen movement played an important role, unlike elsewhere, where there was a wider range of Turkish public and private actors.⁸ Finally, and despite commemoration of the ‘African Ottoman Empire’, Turkish action in Sub-Saharan Africa has been less tainted ideologically than elsewhere, for the sub-continent’s links to the Ottoman Empire and Turkish state were limited, and there was no prior Turkish community there.⁹ The situation differs, for instance, from the relationship between the Gülen Movement and the Turkish state in Central Asia and Iraq. Recent scholarship has shown pan-Turkist ideology to play a central role in this region, with Ankara’s reliance on segments of the local population (such as Turkmens in Iraq) being a determining factor on foreign policy.¹⁰

Focusing specifically on the case of Senegal brings out the concrete processes at stake in the international transfer of a national conflict. I chose Senegal because Gülen schools there are typical, and because the situation has evolved rapidly in the country. The seven schools established by followers of the Gülen Movement in Dakar and Thiès correspond to the general model of Turkish schools in Africa, and in the world more generally. Despite Senegal being a largely Muslim country (95%), the schools are non-confessional (like in most other countries worldwide). The single-sex schools have a limited number of pupils (from 20 to 30) and provide a general education with a scientific slant. As in most countries, the staff is of mixed nationality, with around 60% Senegalese and 40% Turks, who dominate the administrative positions. Gülen movement schools have been very successful, and from the time the first school was founded in Dakar, in 1997, have topped national results. They provide international teaching and rely on their staff’s reputation for being conscientious teachers.¹¹ As a result, they attract wealthy segments of the Senegalese elite ready to pay fees of about €5000 per annum, in line with those at the American and French schools in the country. Until recently, they were attended by the sons and daughters of businessmen, ministers, MPs, and mayors. But the Turkish embassy in Dakar started denouncing the Yavuz Selim (Gülen-affiliated) schools for harbouring an alleged ‘terrorist movement’. Despite the social prestige of these schools, the Senegalese authorities acquiesced to demands to hand over their running to a semi-public Turkish organization, the Maarif Foundation, triggering social unrest in the country. Senegal thus provides a good entry point for understanding the functioning of the Gülen movement in Africa and its reconfiguration since 2013. It also shows how the Turkish government has worked to expand its reach abroad, and casts light on the new forms in which a conflict originating in Turkey has transpired in the context of Africa.

The background and starting point for this paper is extensive multi-site ethnographic investigation I conducted for my doctoral research, between 2011 and 2016, in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, and Turkey. Given my choice of Senegal as the case study here, I have drawn on interviews and participatory observation conducted in Turkey and in Senegal in 2014 and 2015. The situation in Turkey and Africa has subsequently become highly sensitive, and I have not conducted any field research since the attempted coup of 15 July 2016. Hence this article also draws extensively on a non-systematic review of the web, press and TV media coverage in both Turkey and Senegal of subsequent events.

The article is divided into two parts. The first looks at the forms of action developed by the AKP-government to combat the Gülen Movement in African countries, and the varying responses from the African authorities. The second focuses on Senegal, exploring deployment by the Turkish state, changes to the Gülen Movement’s modus operandi, and the way the imported conflict has been reshaped in Senegal.

The role played by diplomacy and education in transferring a Turkish conflict to Sub-Saharan Africa

The AKP-ruled government deliberately transferred political hostilities from Turkey to Sub-Saharan Africa. Its purpose in so doing was to weaken the Gülen network both in Turkey and abroad, for the network has a strongly transnational dimension. An intense diplomatic campaign sought to alert African authorities to the ‘terrorist threat’ the Gülen movement allegedly posed to both Turkey and African countries. In parallel to this, a semi-public foundation was set up to take over the movement’s education centres worldwide. These steps show how the Turkish state’s action was reconfigured outside its borders, meeting with different reactions from different African authorities.

The diplomatic campaign

I would like to draw your attention to a particular matter. I notice that several vicious structures are trying to come between Turkey and some African countries under the guise of non-governmental organizations or education volunteers. We follow them carefully. We hope that our friendly heads of states and governments will be more sensitive to such organizations, which venture into developing secretive structures in each country they operate in and whose spying activities are becoming increasingly more apparent. I would like to emphasize here that we are ready to share any kind of information and conduct a joint struggle against organization or organizations constituting a serious threat in each country, including Turkey, where they operate under the mask of education or humanitarian assistance.¹²

[Speech by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Turkey, at the Second Turkey–Africa Summit, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea in 2014].

In 2014 the newly elected President Erdoğan (in office since 28 August 2014, having previously been prime minister) sought to ‘draw the attention’ of African authorities attending the Second Turkey–Africa Summit held in Equatorial Guinea from 19 to 21 November. The First Turkey–Africa Summit had been held in Istanbul six years earlier, in 2008, in partnership with the fethullahçı (Gülen-related) business confederation TUSKON.¹³

In the speech quoted above, Erdoğan never names the threat he is denouncing, thereby adding to its mysterious dimension. He hints at a plot, and evil occult action. ‘Vicious structures’ are said to operate behind the schools, damaging Turkey-Africa relations, and threatening the state apparatus of each country where those schools or charities are established. Erdoğan accuses these secret structures of trying to penetrate the state apparatus in African countries (as indeed in Turkey) with the purpose of overthrowing them. States need to cooperate through diplomacy and intelligence-sharing to fight what is presented as a transnational terrorist organization.

Other high-level meetings were organized for specific Turkish initiatives in Africa. The ‘Turkey–Africa Conference for Ministers of Education’ (‘Türkiye–Afrika Eğitim Bakanları Konferansı’) was held from 19 to 21 October 2017, opened by President Erdoğan, and chaired by Ismet Yilmaz, the Turkish minister of education, and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the minister of foreign affairs. It was attended by ministers of education and their officials from 38 African countries. Turkey’s minister of education declared: ‘our goal is to develop our relations in the education sector with African countries and inform them about the existence of FETÖ schools’.¹⁴

Moving on from the topic of diplomatic exchanges at the upper echelons of state, the relationship between Turkey’s public and private actors in each African country started to change as of 2014. Alternative private actors from Turkey were promoted as future partners for the Turkish embassies. The Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association (Müstakil Sanayici ve İş Adamları Derneği, MÜSIAD) set up a South African branch in September 2016, to replace the defunct rival business confederation TUSKON, shut down in July 2016. The Turkish ambassador to South Africa, Kaan Esener. attended the launch, as did the MÜSIAD general director, Nail Olpak.¹⁵

In addition to promoting new types of private actors, the Turkish government set up the Maarif Foundation, a hybrid public–private structure of international scope, which has been particularly active in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Maarif Foundation: a transnational structure to take over Gülen schools

On 17 June 2016, the Turkish prime minister proclaimed a law establishing the Maarif Foundation. ‘Maarif’—a Turkish Ottoman term with Arabic origins—means education and instruction. This structure, placed under the authority of the minister of education, was tasked with the following international mission:

To award scholarships in all educational processes from preschool to University education, to open facilities such as educational organizations and dormitories, to train educators to be assigned to these organizations including domestic organizations, to conduct scientific research, and to carry out research and development studies, publish academic works and develop methods and conduct other educational activities which are in accordance with the laws and regulations of that country which these [sic] are operated in order to service and improve formal and informal education by taking common human values and knowledge as a basis.¹⁶

Its governing board is composed of members nominated by the president of Turkey, minister of education, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of finance, with an additional seat held by a representative of the Commission for Higher Education (Yüksek Ögretim Kurulu, YÖK). It is thus a predominantly governmental structure. This board appoints the foundation’s managers. The foundation receives private funds and public subsidies and may also use any profit generated by enterprises it is involved in.¹⁷ Like all foundations in Turkey, it is tax-exempt.¹⁸

Its statute states that ‘in case of need, all of these activities or some of them stated in this article might be carried out by founding or taking over companies possessing private law legal entity’.¹⁹ Hence this foundation may take control of property belonging to private education institutes both in Turkey (cram schools, universities, high schools, and dormitories belonging to followers of the Gülen movement which were closed down after the failed coup of 15 July 2016) and around the world. Its head, Professor Dr. Birol Akgün, declared the foundation’s main objective to be to replace schools linked to the alleged terrorist group (the Gülen movement) with education establishments representing Turkey around the world.²⁰ Concretely, his foundation seeks to replace Turkish staff in Gülen schools with new people, either civil servants who can ask to be transferred abroad, or graduate students who, having failed the national teacher training exam, can be recruited on short-term contracts for these posts.²¹

The head of the Maarif Foundation, nominated after the failed coup in Turkey, was previously head of the International Relations department at the (public) Ankara Yıldırım Beyazit University. He had co-authored with Mehmet Özkan several academic works on Turkey’s expanding foreign policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.²² In 2010 they noted that Turkey’s foreign policy in the region was characterized by the important role played by non-public actors, especially Islamic ones, including the Gülen movement. They argued that it was possible, for the first time, to talk of the genuine co-production of foreign policy by private and public actors under AKP rule from 2002 onwards. Thus, the new head of the Maarif Foundation is an international relations specialist who is knowledgeable about foreign policy in Africa and about the Gülen movement’s activities in the region.

This semi-public structure raises questions about the frontier between the public and private realm.²³ It illustrates the contemporary redeployment of state power, discharged onto hybrid structures operating outside the nation-state. ‘Discharge’ was a notion first employed by Max Weber to describe non-bureaucratized societies that did not rely on a strong administrative apparatus to govern, but rather on private actors functioning as intermediaries.²⁴ Beatrice Hibou suggests that this type of governmentality is once again dominant in the contemporary period.²⁵ Writing about Turkey, Élise Massicard has argued that the AKP, which came to power in 2002, has deployed its action beyond its own state structure through ‘discharging’ onto both private and ‘para-public’ actors.²⁶ Changing relations between the Gülen movement and the Turkish state outside Turkey illustrate the AKP’s redeployment of governance modes, drawing on clusters which blend private actors and public actors to constitute new public policy networks.²⁷ In a first phase, the Turkish government relied on a private actor, the fethullahcı networks in Africa (2002–2013). In a second phase (starting late 2013), it set up its own para-public structures by integrating alternative networks. These new trends show Turkey’s public actors to be tightening their control over private actors. Whereas collaboration between public and private actors in Africa used to be more loose and informal, it is now through structures placed under the direct control of the Turkish prime minister and President that the coalition between private and public actors is being refashioned.

The transnational dimension prompts us to question how Turkish action has been viewed by national African authorities. Indeed, Ankara can only redeploy its power beyond its frontiers if public—and private—actors in these countries accept and negotiate this project.

A brief overview of responses by the African authorities

While Gülen schools have been closed in other countries (Morocco, Azerbaijan, and Iraq), it is in Sub-Saharan Africa that negotiations have been the most effective.²⁸ Thus far, the Gülen schools have been closed or transferred to the Maarif Foundation in the following countries: Somalia, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Mali, Sudan, Burundi, and Benin. At the end of the ‘Turkey-Africa Conference for Ministers of Education’, Ismet Yilmaz declared that 32 schools formerly belonging to followers of the Gülen Movement had already been transferred to the Maarif foundation, and that agreements had been signed with 26 countries in Africa.

It is not possible to assert with certainty why African countries seem more responsive to Turkey’s steps than other regions in the world. However, it may be hypothesized that this results from the specific drive by Turkish diplomacy in this region, and from the dissymmetric power relations most African countries have with the Turkish economy. We may further hypothesize that it is the smallest or weakest countries, and those which are most dependant on Turkey’s aid, that are most likely to accept to close schools (which operate under local private law) designated by Ankara as part of the ‘FETÖ’ network, so as not to endanger their diplomatic relations with Turkey. For instance, two days after the failed coup in Turkey, the schools in Somalia and Niger were transferred to the Maarif Foundation. Somalia and Niger are countries that receive substantial sums in Turkish foreign aid.²⁹ Dissymmetrical relations with several African states would make it easier for the Turkish state to transfer its repression against the Gülen Movement. Conversely, other countries whose political and economic strength are comparable to Turkey’s (such as South Africa) have been notably reluctant to comply with Turkish demands.

Negative publicity promulgated by Turkish diplomats and officials draws on the ambiguous identification of the schools to bolster the AKP-government’s claim that the Gülen Movement is a terrorist organization. Has the Turkish administration broken the movement’s modus operandi by turning its ambiguous identification back against it? To provide a grounded answer to this question, the second part of this article will now look at the case of Senegal, which reveals how the conflict has been ‘indigenized’.

The ‘indigenization’ of the conflict in Senegal

After months of unrest and uncertainty, the Yavuz Selim schools were shut down in October 2017. At first, the Senegalese authorities decided to hand them over to the Maarif Foundation in the coming months, but at the time of writing in February 2018 their future remains unclear. This case study illustrates how repression is deployed against the Gülen Movement outside Turkey. It also shows the movement’s changing strategies, and how Senegalese actors have appropriated these events.

The decision by the Senegalese authorities

Why did the Senegalese authorities accept to hand over these establishments, which were among the top private schools in the country? In late August 2016, the representative for Senegal of Turkey’s foreign economic relations board, DEIK (Dış Ekonomik İlişkiler Kurulu), and the Turkish ambassador in Dakar held meetings with the Senegalese minister of education to ‘denounce the terrorist organization hiding behind the Yavuz Selim schools of this country’, and to call for reinforced economic cooperation between the two ‘brother countries’.³⁰ At the same time, the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (Türk İşbirliği ve Koordinasyon Ajansı Başkanlığı, TIKA) and the 100% state-owned Exim Bank signalled they were ready to sink new investment into the country.³¹ Economic factors thus played a part in negotiations to close the schools. The Senegalese authorities accepted to transfer the schools to the Maarif Foundation in order to secure long-term commercial cooperation involving new public actors (TIKA, Exim Bank, DEIK) and new private actors (MÜSIAD).

In December 2016, the ‘Başkent eğitimi’ association’s authorization to run the Yavuz Selim schools was suspended. The minister of education announced that the 238 Senegalese members of staff would keep their jobs, but Turkish staff would be fired from the schools, now run by the Maarif Foundation.³² A parents’ association was formed in reaction to this, and it appealed to Senegal’s Supreme Court contesting the legality of this decision. After months of uncertainty, the court decided in 2017 that the decree was legal. In October 2017, after months of unrest, indecision, and legal proceedings, the schools were closed, with the Senegalese police in attendance. Their transfer to the Maarif Foundation remains uncertain.

National mobilization for a transnational group

Over the period of indecision, from December 2016 to October 2017, a public mobilization campaign was set up. It deployed repertoires of collective action not previously used in institutions created by Gülen followers, differing in terms both of form and of ideological content.

The protest element contrasts with the form usually taken by Gülen followers’ collective action in Turkey and around the world. They usually avoid direct political action, instead opting for discreet lobbying of local and national political authorities, steering clear of any contentious element.³³ Conversely, the objective here, in this transnational configuration, was to publicize and mediatize collective action, building up popular support so as to put pressure on the Senegalese authorities. Rallies and press conferences were held in the schools at Dakar and Thiès, attended by parents, students, teachers, lawyers, and public figures supporting the cause.³⁴ At one press conference, several teachers’ unions announced their support for the association running the schools.³⁵ New slogans were coined and used as banners on school websites and in school halls. These slogans were derived from well-known movements in France. For instance, SOS racisme’s 1985 slogan ‘Touche pas à mon pote’ (‘Hands off my pal’) became ‘Hands off my school’ (‘Touche pas à mon école’). The ‘Je suis Charlie’ (‘I am Charlie’) of January 2015, in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo—also used in Turkey after the assassination of Hrant Dink—became ‘I am Yavuz Selim’. This suggests that it was Senegalese people with links to France, not Turks, who transferred this know-how, from France to Senegal, to create slogans for collective action.

A ‘virtual community’ was also mobilized, with online petitions launched by former students calling for the ‘unbreakable Yavuz family’ to be protected. The hashtag ‘I am Yavuz Selim’ was broadcast on the web, and former students posted videos in defence of their schools. The virtual word was thus one of the main means for publicizing protest. Opinion columns and open letters were published in the press, specifically in the national daily Le Quotidien, whose owner, Mandabal Diagne, was appointed head of the Yavuz Selim administrative board in early 2017 to help prevent the closure of the schools.³⁶ Public demonstrations have also been held (with legal authorization) and attended by several members of parliament, city councillors, journalists, and mayors, whose children are enrolled at Yavuz Selim schools.³⁷ ‘Y’en a marre’, a famous Senegalese group of young rappers, artists and journalists, created in January 2011, held a concert in support of the schools. This group had previously triggered a mass mobilization campaign in Senegalese cities in 2011, denouncing the cost of living and regular electricity outages. According to one representative, rapper Simon Kouka, the Senegalese authorities ought not to allow problems from Turkey to be transferred to Senegal, and ought to defend the schools in the name of Senegalese sovereignty.³⁸

A more traditional form of action for the Gülen Movement was also maintained, in the form of lobbying, dinners and invitations by Turkish school administrators. In April 2017 a dinner was held, attended by the director of the Yavuz Selim schools, directors of the Catholic schools in Dakar, and the head of the interreligious dialogue platform Turkey-Senegal Atlantic Association (Association Turquie–Sénégal Atlantique, ATSA).

In short, new repertoires of collective actions have been mobilized to prevent the schools being transferred to the Maarif Foundation. This is a new move for the Gülen Movement, which generally acts discretely and shuns direct action with a political content.

Further analysis brings out the promotion of the schools’ Senegalese and international dimension, over any Turkish dimension.

The schools’ logo was strategically altered shortly after the decision to transfer the schools to the Maarif Foundation was announced. Until 2016, the logo showed two pages of a book, on which the Turkish flag appeared alongside the Senegalese flag. Both flags have been erased, the two pages of the book are now just yellow, and the colours of the logo recall those of the Senegalese flag (yellow, green, and red; Figure 1).

Figure 1. Before and after: the removal of the Turkish flag from the Yavuz Selim school logo.

Source: www.gsyavuzselim.edu.sn, last consulted March 2017. The Yavuz Selim schools have been closed since then.

In all public events the emphasis is placed on the Senegalese actors, be it through the parents’ associations, the association of ‘former Yavuz Selim students’, the teachers’ union, or the official spokesperson for the schools (Mr. N’Diaye, head of human resources for Yavuz Selim). Senegalese are in the front row at demonstrations, press conferences, support concerts, and TV, web, and radio appearances. Turks, who make up about 40% of the staff, and the vast majority of school administrators and managers, are barely visible in these collective actions, and none of them speak during public appearances. This demonstrates the Gülen Movement’s well-known flexibility of functioning, with its Senegalese staff being put forward at the expense of Turks in the publicization of these events. It is a way to emphasize the Senegalese dimension of the schools, and to turn their movement into a protest to protect Senegal’s sovereignty against AKP-government intrusion. It also shows that the cause has now been appropriated by Senegalese people.

What is more, the international dimension is promoted to emphasize Yavuz Selim’s greater legitimacy in comparison to that of the Maarif Foundation. The group, threatened with closure in Senegal, highlights its international (but not Turkish) dimension in its combat against what is presented as Turkish imperialism. For instance, at all the press conferences held in the school of Dakar, the background includes a big placard listing the destinations and names of its former alumni who went to China, the USA, Canada, Turkey, and France, and the international mobility of its alumni is emphasized in the speeches. A web campaign of posting videos from all over the world attracted contributions from dozens of former Yavuz Selim students.

Overall, three strands may be detected: the Senegalese dimension is emphasized, along with the internationalization offered by the schools, while the strictly speaking Turkish dimension is effaced. This refashions the discourse of protest, configured as a fight for sovereignty against Turkey. These actions are ‘staged narratives’, emphasizing discourse developed by actors who are promoted as representatives in the fight to maintain Yavuz Selim Foundation’s control over the schools. But in addition to this, it indigenizes the issue, politicizing a new cause in the local arena—one of the means by which collective actions spread.³⁹ This reveals a way of operating specific to the Gülen Movement, as well as the appropriation and subsequent reformulation of the stakes by local actors.

Let us now turn to the content of these new types of collective action. TV and press statements by representatives of the protest movement deploy legal arguments that they relay in the media.

The defence of Yavuz Selim by its official and informal advocates (Senegalese parents, Yavuz Selim teachers’ representatives) is centred on the issue of sovereignty. The schools are subject to Senegalese law, so the issue is presented as a specifically Senegalese case. Yavuz Selim’s lawyers argue that a Turkish public-law foundation is not entitled to seize private property belonging to a Senegalese private-law entity. It is even less legitimate for it to lay claim to property from an education group that performed outstandingly in national exams and educates members of the Senegalese elite. Such ideas are put forward by several public figures seeking to defend Yavuz Selim schools. El Hadji Diouf—a Yavuz Selim parent who is a lawyer, MP, head of the Parti des travailleurs et du people (Workers’ and Peoples’ Party), and a losing candidate in Senegal’s 2012 presidential election—is the main media figure in the fight against closing Yavuz Selim schools. He explained on a national news channel on 16 December 2016 that Yavuz Selim had never promoted ‘any jihadist, extremist or dangerous policy’, and that it was the ‘pride of Senegal’.⁴⁰ He defended ‘Senegal’s sovereignty against the dictator Erdoğan’. In February 2017, commenting on the arrest of Dakar’s mayor, Diouf announced ‘the start of a political fight against President Macky Sall’s regime’.⁴¹ It was thus in his interest to latch onto the ‘Yavuz Selim case’ and present himself as the staunch defender of Senegalese sovereignty against Macky Sall, accused of being subject to foreign influences.

Senegalese parents, who are in contact with Gülen followers through the schools and through lobbying, conduct visible protest in the public realm. These parents include MPs, city councillors, journalists, and owners of big companies, and are influential individuals in Senegal. Their support gives a national dimension to this local issue. For instance, the ‘Yavuz Selim case’ was discussed at the National Assembly of Senegal, after an MP whose children are enrolled in one of their schools tabled a question to the minister of education.

Hence these collective actions do not set out to defend Fethullah Gülen, or to denounce Erdoğan’s ruling in Turkey. They are framed mainly within the national context of Senegal, and there is no coordinated movement by Turkish schools across different countries, unlike alter-globalization organizations for instance.⁴² They are also framed by nationalist discourse: defending Senegal’s sovereignty, preserving the pupils’ qualification (whose internationalization is seen as a way to strengthen Senegal), and defending the jobs of Senegalese staff.

Internationalization—a boon or a trap for the Gülen Movement?

This section sets out a few remarks about internationalization at both a meso-level (the Gülen Movement as a transnational network) and a micro-level (the Gülen followers).

‘Working misunderstandings’ and international opportunities in a transnational organization in crisis

This case study raises questions about the convertibility of social capital (networks of relations) into political capital (political support) for a group such as the Gülen Movement.⁴³ Marie Vannetzel, in her study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, argues that this type of conversion is not automatic. She notes that the Brotherhood is dispersed informally across social space, that its group identity is never asserted (due to ambiguous identification), and that support for its action does not necessarily translate into political support. On the upside (from the group’s point of view), floating identification allows such groups to reach a broader segment of the societies in which they are embedded. Transferring her analysis to our case, people who would not normally have engaged with a Muslim group from Turkey take part in the activities it runs, thus helping the group to expand. Yet, on the downside, such groups rely on random processes of identification to boost their political support, making them weaker.⁴⁴

In the case of the Gülen Movement, the fact that their schools tended not to be identified as Gülen organizations by the population has had several consequences on the types of mobilization employed. There is no campaign by Turkish schools worldwide to defend Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen Movement in Turkey, or to directly oppose Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Nor have the Senegalese sought to defend Fethullah Gülen or the Gülen Movement as a whole. This floating identification has led to the local schools—not the Gülen Movement as a whole—being perceived in new terms and appropriated in new ways. This has resulted in ‘working misunderstandings’, in which Turks and Senegalese mobilize for different reasons, with different views of the issue, but with ultimately convergent interests. Hence political actions are conducted that indirectly support the Gülen Movement, whose followers can claim to be apolitical. Furthermore, these political actions are not conducted by Turks, but by Africans who do not identify as followers of the Gülen Movement. Thus, in its attempt to survive, the Gülen Movement can draw on the mobilization of individuals who are not core followers but on the margins of the movement. These individuals, without supporting the Gülen Movement or agreeing with its principles, re-appropriate its organizations and fight for their protection.

The Senegalese case study shows that the Muslim movement now owes its survival more than ever to its geographical peripheries (African branches more than transnational resources coming from Turkey) and to its margins (in terms of belonging, it now relies on individuals who are not followers of Fethullah Gülen, but who have direct ties to Gülen schools). Yet the abrupt drop in the level of economic, human, and symbolic resources coming from Turkey, and the movement’s growing dependence on local African networks, is having consequences. Resources on the movement’s peripheries (Africa) are becoming more important than resources at its centre (hitherto Turkey). This may reconfigure the movement, by subjecting it to the diverse influences of its countries of settlement. And when there is no resource centralizer, the risks of division increase. The international homogeneity and coherence of the Gülen Movement as a whole is thus under threat.

‘Broken individual trajectories’—the trap of the international

Future field research needs to be conducted on the situation of the Gülen Movement’s Turkish followers, who now constitute a diaspora in the making. In Senegal, they number over 150 people, who work mainly as teachers and in key administrative positions in Turkish schools. These individuals cannot go back to Turkey without risking arrest, prosecution, and jail. Meanwhile, they have lost their positions, and the attendant financial, symbolic, and cultural resources they could draw on from the transnational Gülen network. They will therefore have to move to new branches, and join new networks other than the Gülen Movement, which is now unable to provide its followers with stable career prospects. These points are all the more relevant in the African case study, because the Turkish followers had had no previous link with African countries before coming on their ‘mission’ as teachers. They relied almost entirely upon the Gülen Movement and lived as a comparatively closed expatriate community in African societies (in Senegal, virtually none of the Turkish teachers or administrators spoke French). This needs to be distinguished from the situation of Gülen Movement followers in other regions of the world. In France and Germany, for instance, many of the Turkish administrators and teachers in the schools and other Gülen structures already held the nationality of their country of work, having lived and studied in these countries for a long time. Their presence was the result of earlier waves of Turkish migration to these countries. It can thus be hypothesized that if necessary these individuals could adapt more easily to social and professional change than those living in African countries.

Conclusion

Ankara has denounced the Gülen Movement’s organized opacity, and argued it is a terrorist organization hiding behind schools and charities working to overthrow African governments. The Turkish government has thus deliberately transferred the conflict. This has prompted it to redefine the way it produces its African policy on the ground. It is interesting to note the isomorphism characterizing the ways the Turkish state has redeployed its African policy. To destroy what it considers as the ‘FETÖ’, and to reinforce its own position in Turkey, the Turkish government has had to develop tools for its own transnationalization—just as the Gülen Movement did in the 1990s. To this end, the diplomatic attack has focused particularly on Sub-Saharan African—as did the Gülen Movement. It created its own structure, the Maarif Foundation, to conduct education and charity projects around the world and to take over Gülen structures. The Turkish state has adopted a path-dependent response, seeking not to close the schools but to take control of them, firing existing staff and installing its own. In seeking to replace the Gülen Movement, the Turkish state would appear to have aligned its African policy on the earlier strategies of the now weakened movement.

The African authorities, facing a campaign presenting the Gülen Movement as a terrorist organization, has reacted differently depending on their diplomatic weight and the economic stakes involved. The success of Turkey’s diplomatic initiatives stems partly from the country’s economic partnership with several African states, and their receipt of Turkish foreign aid. Senegal is a good case study of the redeployment of this conflict to an outside country, where it has been re-appropriated and reinvented within the local context. Numerous private and public actors have ‘indigenized’ the Gülen issue, turning it into a Senegalese cause. Gülen schools have been re-appropriated by locals, showing that the movement now owes its survival to its margins, and thereby risks losing its international unity.

Gülen followers currently constitute a Turkish diaspora in the making, and one may wonder what their future will be. How will this new diaspora convert socially and professionally? Will these people become an even more tightly connected and radicalized community, surviving as a self-reliant yet marginalized group? Or will they leave the Gülen Movement’s socialization circles behind, to seek out new social and professional horizons in their host country?

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank the two guest editors of this special issue, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk and Simon Watmough, as well as the editors of Politics, Religion and Ideology and the anonymous reviewers for their advice and corrections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Gabrielle Angey is Assistant Professor of Modern Turkey at the Centre of Southeast European Studies, which she joined in October 2017. Before coming to Graz, she completed her PhD in Political Sociology at the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes des Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. She had previously obtained her Master degree in African Affairs and Political Sociology at Sciences Po Bordeaux.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PROPOL research program (The production of politics in the post-Ottoman space), funded by Paris Sciences et Lettres.

Notes

1 J.D. Hendrick, Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

2 J.-F. Bayart, ‘L'historicité de l'Etat importé’, Les Cahiers du CERI, 15 (1996), p. 23.

3 C. Tilly and S. Tarrow, Contentious Politics, 1st ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

4 J. Siméant, ^‘La transnationalisation de l’action collective’ in Penser les mouvements sociaux (Paris: La Découverte, 2010), pp. 121–144.

5 B. Badie and M.-C. Smouts, Le retournement du monde: Sociologie de la scène internationale, 3rd ed. (Paris: Éditions Dalloz—Sirey, 1999); J.-F. Bayart, Le gouvernement du monde (Paris: Fayard, 2004).

6 Concerning contemporary governementality regimes, see M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the College De France, 1977–78 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); Regarding the notion of ‘undesired diaspora’, refer to S. Turner and N. Kleist, ‘Agents of Change? Staging and Governing Diasporas and the African State’, African Studies, 72:2 (2013), pp. 192–206.

7 A. Colonomos (ed.), Sociologie des réseaux transnationaux (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000).

8 K. Öktem, New Islamic Actors after the Wahhabi Intermezzo: Turkey’s Return to Mus-lim Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University European Studies Centre, 2010), http://www.balkanmuslims.com/pdf/Oktem-Balkan-Muslims.pdf.

9 T.Wheeler, ‘Turkey and South Africa: The Development of Relations, 1860–2005’, Report no. 47 (2005), South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2005.

10 Y. Benhaïm, ‘Recompositions de l’État et coproduction de l’action publique’, European Journal of Turkish Studies, 21 (2015), http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/5262; Bayram Balci, Missionnaires de l’Islam en Asie centrale: Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gülen (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003).

11 G. Angey, ‘Le mouvement musulman turc de Fethullah Gülen en Afrique subsaharienne: faire l’école au transnational’, Politique Africaine, 139:3 (2015), pp. 23–42.

12 Source: http://afrika.mfa.gov.tr/21-november-2014-speech-by-HE-recep-tayyip-erdogan-the-president-of-the-republic-of-turkey.en.mfa, consulted 5 June 2017.

13 M. Pannetier, ‘La Turquie en Afrique, une stratégie globale’, Observatoire de la vie politique turque, 2012. E. Bacchi, ‘A timeline of the Turkish Africa policy’, Observatoire de la vie politique turque, 2015.

14 Source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/milli-egitim-bakani-yilmaz-amacimiz-afrika-ulkeleriyle-egitim-iliskimizi-gelistirmek-40615741.

15 MUSIAD South Africa, http://www.thediplomaticsociety.co.za/archive/archive/1928-musiad-south-africa, consulted 28 May 2017.

16 Abstract from the official law establishing the Maarif Foundation: http://turkiyemaarif.org/kurumsal/vakif-kanunu/.

17 When this Foundation was set up, it was given one million Turkish Liras by the ministry of education.

18 Abstract from the official law establishing the Maarif Foundation: http://turkiyemaarif.org/kurumsal/vakif-kanunu/.

19 Abstract from the official law establishing the Maarif Foundation: http://turkiyemaarif.org/kurumsal/vakif-kanunu/.

20 ‘Maarif Foundation head: We aim to offer an education that reflects Turkish vision, promote Turkish language’, 12 February 2017, https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/2017/02/13/maarif-foundation-head-we-aim-to-offer-an-education-that-reflects-turkish-vision-promote-turkish-language.

21 ‘Atanamayan Öğretmen Adaylarına Yurtdışı Fırsatı’, Gündem Haberleri, n.d.

22 M. Ozkan and B. Akgün, ‘Turkey’s Opening to Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 48:4 (2010), pp. 525–546.

23 Maarif Foundation Head: We Aim to Offer an Education That Reflects Turkish Vision, Promote Turkish Language, undated, https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/2017/02/13/maarif-foundation-head-we-aim-to-offer-an-education-that-reflects-turkish-vision-promote-turkish-language.

24 M. Weber, Histoire économique. Esquisse d’une histoire universelle de l’économie et de la société (Paris: Gallimard-NRF, 1991, reedition), pp. 85–92.

25 B. Hibou, ‘La “décharge”, nouvel interventionnisme’, Politique Africaine, 73:1 (1999), pp. 6–15.

26 E. Massicard, ‘Une décennie de pouvoir AKP en Turquie: vers une reconfiguration des modes de gouvernement?’, Les Etudes du CERI, n° 205, 2014.

27 B.Hibou, ‘Retrait ou redéploiement de l'Etat’, Critique Internationale, 1 (1998), pp. 151–168.

28 Source: http://aa.com.tr/en/info/infographic/4865, consulted 10 May 2017; A. Braux, ‘Fin de partie pour les partisans de Gülen en Azerbaïdjan’, Dipnot, 2014.

29 Assessing Turkey’s Role in Somalia, https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/somalia/assessing-turkey-s-role-somalia, consulted 14 November 2017.

30 ‘Yapılan her türlü dezenformasyona rağmen Afrika'da ve özellikle Senegal'de Erdoğan sevgisi nedeniyle yapılacak hiçbir manipülasyon ve operasyon hayata geçirilemiyor. Bunun için çok şanslıyız’, Source: ‘FETÖ’ye Karşı Ilk Cephe Senegal’, undated.

31 Source: ‘Senegal Hükümeti FETÖ Okularrını Maarif Vakfı’na Devretti’—Afrika’nın Sesi undated.

32 As yet no decision has been taken to expel Turkish staff to Turkey.

33 C. Tilly, ‘Les origines du répertoire d’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-Bretagne’, Vingtième Siècle, revue d’histoire, 4:1 (1984), pp. 89–108; Michel Offerlé, ‘Retour critique sur les répertoires de l’action collective (XVIIIe–XXIe siècles)’, Politix, 81 (2009), pp. 181–202.

34 Gathering of pupils’ parents from Yavuz Selim, Bosphorus college, Dakar, 13 December 2014.

35 Source: Yavuz Sélim : Cusems, Sudes et Uden Dénoncent La ‘reculade’ Du Gouvernement undated.

36 ‘Lettre ouverte à Monsieur le Président de la République’, Le Quotidien, 3 January 2017.

37 Source: https://youtu.be/fTiI03pXyUA, consulted 1 June 2017. A demonstration was held on 22 December 2016 in Thiès, and on 23 December in Dakar. Seynadou Wade, MP, Ndeye Awa Mbodji, MP, Aissatou Gueye, municipal councillor, and Mamadou Diagne Fada, MP, took part in the demonstrations.

38 Source: Le Soleil—Ecole Yavuz Selim : ‘Y’en a Marre’ va Organiser Une Marche de Soutien, undated.

39 Siméant, op. cit.; D. Della Porta and S. Tarrow, Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), pp. 2–3.

40 TV declaration by El Hadji Diouf, December 16, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrg0W_7AsnY, consulted 8 May 2017.

41 Source: https://www.senenews.com/2017/02/23/journee-du-22-fevrier-khalifa-dias-et-me-diouf-annoncent-le-debut-du-combat-contre-macky_181670.html, consulted 8 October 2017.

42 Della Porta and Tarrow, op. cit.

43 P. Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’ in J. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 241–258.

44 M.Vannetzel, Les Frères musulmans égyptiens. Enquête sur un secret public (Paris: Karthala, 2016), pp. 388–391.