Hizmet in Transitions

Front matter

Hizmet in Transitions

European Developments of a Turkish Muslim-Inspired Movement

Paul Weller

Preface

This book has a primary focus on Europe, rather than on the presence and activity in Turkey or other parts of the world of what is known to those within it as Hizmet (meaning in Turkish, “service”). It is also focused much more on the movement than on the Sunni Muslim scholar of Turkish origin Fethullah Gülen, whose teaching and example inspired it. As the first book-length monograph addressing these matters since the events of 15 July 2016 in Turkey and their aftermath (hereafter collectively referred to in abbreviated form as “July 2016”), it aims to offer its readers insight into Hizmet’s intensified and accelerated internal debates, developments, possible future trajectories and transitions, especially in Europe.

It is a companion volume to Paul Weller’s (2022) Fethullah Gilen’s Teaching and Practice: Inheritance, Context and Interactive Development, also published by Palgrave Macmillan which focuses on the person and teaching of Fethullah Giilen who inspired Hizmet. While both books can be read independently, when read together in a complementary way they add detail to some things that are not appropriate to discuss in equal detail in both books, given their respective foci. Read together, they even more strongly illuminate the dynamic inter-relationships between Fethullah Gitilen’s teaching and practice; how that teaching and practice has historically developed and is still developing in a contextually informed way; and vii vill © PREFACE how (as exemplified in this volume, in relation to Europe) its inheritance is then taken forward within different contextual trajectories which, within an overall hermeneutical circle, in turn inform Fethullah Giilen’s own continued contextually developing reflective teaching and practice.

Oxford, UK Paul Weller

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Primary research for this book and its companion volume was conducted during 2017-2020. Bearing in mind the pressures upon those associated with Hizmet not only in Turkey, but also beyond it, and which for some interviewees have ranged from loss of employment, expropriation of property and funds through to imprisonment; the need to undertake irregular and sometimes dangerous migration; threats of violence to persons, family and property; as well as state attempts at legal extradition and/or illegal rendition, acknowledgements for their kind assistance are especially due to the twenty-nine people whom I interviewed.

Among individuals publicly associated with Hizmet organisations in Europe who were interviewed and were also generally content for quotations from what they said to be associated with their names across the book and its complementary volume (Weller 2022) were twelve people, the majority of whose interviews took place in English which, it should be noted, was in most cases not their first or, in some cases, even their second, language. These were Selma Ablak (a member of the Hizmet overleg, or co-ordinating body in the Netherlands); Alper Alasag (also a member of the Hizmet overleg, in the Netherlands); Abdulkerim Balcı (a leading member of the Hizmet-related London Advocacy, UK); Sadik Cinar (Executive Director of the Dialogue Society, UK); Asen Erkinbekov (working with the Platforme de Paris, France); Mustafa Gezen (previously in the leadership of the Dialog Forum, Denmark); Özcan Keleş (Chair of the Dialogue Society’s Board of Trustees and, until 2014, Executive xX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Director of its staff team); Ercan Karakoyun (a leader in the Forum Dialog, Berlin, Germany); Termij6n Termizoda Naziri (President of the Arco Forum, Spain); Ramazan Özgü (responsible within Hizmet for dialogue activities, legal questions and asylum-seeker matters in Switzerland, and an abi—or member of the informal leadership structure of Hizmet—in the Zurich region, Switzerland); Ozgiir Tascioglu (Secretary General of Fedactio, Belgium) and Erkan Toguslu (responsible for the Gtilen Chair, at the Catholic University of Leuven, and also a volunteer in Fedactio, Belgium). Interviews with those from the UK and Switzerland took place in person in the countries concerned in 2018, while the others were conducted over Skype in 2018-2019.

While readers may have noted that this book is dedicated to one of the forgoing interviewees (Özcan Keleş), neither the fact nor the content of that dedication should be taken as an evaluative endorsement of all or any of the particular positions taken by Keleş in terms of his positioning in relation to debates within the movement. Rather, in both this book and its complementary volume (Weller 2022), these positions are presented alongside those of other interviewees with the aim of giving readers insight into a range of positions being taken and the debate that is ongoing within Hizmet in relation to its future possible trajectories. At the same time Keles’ (2021) unpublished doctoral thesis at the University of Sussex on The Knowledge Production of Social Movement Practice at the Intersection of Islam and Human Rights: The Case of Hizmet, and to which this author was kindly given privileged access just prior to submitting the manuscript, is a piece of work that this author evaluates highly as a very important specialist contribution to the field which, in due course when it is translated into published form, is likely also to have a wider impact in facilitating an understanding of both Hizmet and Fethullah Giilen.

From among Fethullah Giilen’s close associates who were content for quotations from what they said to be associated with their names across this book and its complementary volume (Weller 2022), acknowledgements are due to nine individuals: Muhammed Cetin, Enes Ergene, Mustafa Fidan, Resit Haylamaz, Ahmet Kurucan, Mustafa Ozcan, Hamdullah Öztürk, Serif Ali Tekalan, and Hakan Yeşilova. Haylamaz and Ozcan have been with Fethullah Giilen since close to the start of his public work; as was Fidan, who was one of Giilen’s early business supporters. Tekalan first met Gtilen in 1971 when he was a medical student and became an otolaryngologist by profession and later President (2010-2016) of the Hizmet-related Fatih University in Istanbul. Kurucan was a student

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi of Giilen who, although he had students dating back to the 1960s, formed a new circle of students on 23 October 1985, and of which Kurucan was a part. Öztürk was a later student of Giilen’s, while Ergene is author of a book on Fethullah Giilen and Hizmet, and Yesilova is editor of Hizmet’s Fountain magazine. Cetin was (with the support of Fethullah Giilen and Hizmet, under circumstances discussed further in Sect. 4.1) a Member of Parliament in Turkey between 2011 and 2014.

The great majority of these interviews took place in the USA in December 2017 (with the exception of that with Tekalan, which took place in the UK in April 2019) and were conducted in Turkish, supported by Turkish-English-Turkish translation and interpretation undertaken within research ethics approved protocols. This included two interviews with Fethullah Giilen himself, to whom special thanks must be recorded for allowing me to interview him towards the end of 2017 at a time when he was not physically well.

Acknowledgements are also due to three male Hizmet-related asylum-seekers (identified in the text as AS], AS2 and AS3), and one female Hizmet-related asylum-seeker (identified in the text as AS4) who is married to AS3, all of whom at the time the interviews took place in November 2018 were based in Switzerland. These interviewees not unsurprisingly requested and were granted anonymity. All of the asylum-seeker interviews were conducted in English.

This was also the case, as was the grant of anonymity, for three other individuals both of whom were male: one is publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe, identified in the text as HE1, and whose interview took place over Skype in August 2018; and one is a Hizmet participant in Italy, identified in the text as HE2 and who was interviewed over Skype in September and October 2019; and one is a participant observer of Hizmet in the Netherlands, identified in the text as HE3, and whose interview took place over Skype in August 2019. A request for anonymity was also made and granted in relation to the attribution of some specific quotations (addressed in Weller 2022) from a male interviewee from among the associates of Fethullah Gülen and which are identified as being contributed by CA1.

All interviewees were given the opportunity to review and, if necessary, correct and/or clarify written draft transcripts of the digital recordings of their interviews. At the same time, it should be noted that the interviewees have not reviewed or approved the selected quotations used by the author from their transcripts or how those selections have been deployed in the xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS text, the responsibility for which lies with the author’s professionalism in terms of a best understanding of the overall contributions and intentions of the interviewees, and a commitment to, as far as possible, try to avoid being unrepresentative or unbalanced in use of the materials concerned.

Given that English was not the first language of the vast majority of those interviewed, in the presentation of quotations are sentences that are not completely correct in terms of English grammar or structure but in relation to which the decision has been made, where the intended meaning of the interview seems intelligible, not to correct or “improve” the record of what was said orally, but to leave it as it was originally recorded, thereby reflecting something of its original oral flavour.

Finally, acknowledgements are due to members of the research project’s reference group. During the lifetime of the project this included Revd. Professor Dr Paul Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology and formerly Research Director, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford; Revd. Dr Nicholas Wood, formerly Fellow in Religion and Culture and previously Director of the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College; Dr Minlib Dalhl, OP, formerly Research Fellow in the Study of Love in Religion, Regent’s Park College; Dr Anthony Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, Regent’s Park College; Mahmut Gunyadin from the Dialogue Society, Oxford; Dr Fatih Isik and Dr Ismail Mesut Sezgin — Dialogue Society volunteers; Mr Sadik Cinar, Executive Director, the Dialogue Society; Mr Cem Erbil, Academic Director, the Dialogue Society; and Mr Özcan Keleş, Chair of the Dialogue Society.

COPYRIGHT PERMISSIONS

The vast majority of this book’s content is formed from new primary research data. However, acknowledgements are also due to authors, publishers and creators of websites whose work this book quotes under the generally recognised provisions for “fair dealing ... for the purposes of criticism or review”. Every attempt has been made to exclude material in this book that may go beyond such provisions. If, in error, the author has inaccurately or not fully represented or referenced any material and if this is brought to the author’s attention, any such mistakes will be rectified in any future editions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL THANKS

The author wishes to record personal and professional thanks to other colleagues at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and beyond, who supported him by showing an interest in his work on this book and the research that underlies it. This includes the former Principal of the College, Revd. Dr Robert Ellis, who supported bringing the project to the College, and Ms Nichola Kilpin, the College’s Finance Officer, who administered the project funds granted through the Dialogue Society, behind which were individual anonymous donors, without whose financial support neither the research project underlying these two books would not have been possible, nor their publication in Open Access format would have been possible.

Personal thanks are due to the author’s wife, Marie Adenau, for her patience with and interest in this book and its companion volume, as well as the author’s wider work on Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet.

Finally, professional thanks are due to colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan for their patient support and work in bringing this book to publication, including especially to Philip Getz, Senior Editor, Palgrave Macmillan; Amy Invernizzi, Assistant Editor Philosophy and Religion, Palgrave Macmillan; Jack Heeney, Editorial Assistant—Literature and Theatre & Performance, Palgrave Macmillan; and Immy Higgins, Editorial Assistant—BEST (Books Editorial Service Team) Springer Nature: as well as to the copy-editing and production team lead by the Springer Nature production manager, Dhanalakshmi Muralidharan.

‘TURKISH WORDS

Since Turkish is the first language of both Fethullah Giilen and of many of those inspired by his life, teaching and practice (including many of those in Europe) and it remains an important language in Hizmet’s overall milieu, generally speaking key Turkish language terms and concepts are, on first use in this book, referred to in their original Turkish form, followed by an English language translation and/or explanation.

Turkish words are generally used in their modern Latin script form, without diacritics apart from those that are normally present in modern Turkish writing (6, ü, ğ, ç) which contains several letters that are not present in the English alphabet. These are pronounced as follows:

C, ¢ “ch” as in “chime”

& which lengthens the sound of the vowel that appears before it; except that when it appears between two vowels it is not pronounced

I, 1 the sound of the “a” as pronounced in “attack”

O, 6 same as the sound of “u” in “Turkey”

S,s “sh” as in “shoot”

U, ti same as “u” in “tube”

XV

CONTENTS l Introduction 1.1 The Focus of the Book 12 A Religious Studies Approach and the “Politics of Naming” 1.3 Situating in the Author’s Previous Research and the Wider

Literature 14 Evidence, Aims and Methods References

Part I Hizmetin Turkish Origins and European Development 21 Hizmet: The Emergence of a Phenomenon

2.2. Turkey’s Need for More Schools, Not More Mosques

2.3 Turkey’s Deep Fissures, Need for Dialogue and Hizmet Responses

2.4 Relief of Poverty

2.5 Business Links

2.6 The Media

2.7 Spread to “Turkic” Republics of the Former USSR and to the Western Balkans

References xvii xviii

Contents

3.1 Hizmet at European Level and Across Europe 3.2 Hizmet in the Netherlands

3.3 Hizmetin Germany

3.4 Hizmetin Belgium

Part II Hizmet in Turkish De-centring and European Transitions

4.1 The AKP and Hizmet: Walking in Tandem?

42 Mutual “Infiltration”?

4.3 The MV Mavi Marmara Incident: A Sign of Things to Come

44 From Gezi Park to 15 July 2016

45 Hizmet Trauma in Turkey and Europe

4.6 Three-Layered Hizmet: Challenges and Opportunities

References ood red

Changing Contexts

Seen as Terrorists and Challenging Terrorism Turkishness and Beyond

Charisma, Structures and Transparency Relating to Civil Society, Politics and the State Relating to Other Muslims

Gender in Transition

References

CONTENTS

6 Continuing Values, Different Expressions and Future Trajectories

6.1

Contextual Transitions

6.2 Education to Tackle Ignorance

6.3 Dialogue to Tackle Conflict and Promote Inclusive Integration

6.4 Helping to Relieve Poverty Developing into Supporting Human Rights

6.5 Meeting Needs and Keeping the Balance

6.6 Hizmet in Europe With and/or Without Fethullah Gülen

6.7 Confident Engagement, Islamic Self-Criticism and Human Focus

6.8 From Copy-Paste into Contextual Reinvention

References

Index xix

239 246

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Weller When conducting the research that lies behind the writing of this book, and during its substantive writing, Paul Weller was part-time Research Fellow in Religion and Society and Associate Director (UK) of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, Regent’s Park College, a Baptist Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford, where he is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He retired from his employed Research Fellowship at the end of November 2021, and from 1 December, his Research Fellowship became a non-Stipendiary one. He is also Emeritus Professor of the University of Derby and a Visiting Professor in the Research Institute for Peace, Security and Social Justice of Coventry University.

Introduction

1.1 THE Focus OF THE BOOK

This book sets out to offer the reader an understanding of the origins and development of what it argues is one of the most dynamic Islamically inspired civil society movements in contemporary Europe and of how this movement, known among those who seek to live it as Hizmet (from a Turkish word meaning ‘service’), is currently undergoing a period of what could be quite significant transitions for its present and future.

Inspired by the teaching and practice of the Turkish Sunni Muslim Islamic scholar of the Hanafi school, Fethullah Gülen, this movement began in Turkey in the 1960s. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Giilen encouraged the spread of Hizmet into the Turkic world of Central Asia and then beyond, including into other continents. Hizmet has therefore developed a global footprint, including in Europe. During the early 1960s, large numbers of people of Turkish origin had migrated to Europe to fill the labour shortages of the post-Second World War period (Abadan-Unat 2011). Some of these sought to connect with the Hizmet initiatives that were developing a considerable momentum in Turkey and, by the early 1970s, Fethullah Gülen and other leading figures from Turkey originally inspired by him visited Europe.

Although this book is not focused on Hizmet’s original homeland of Turkey, Hizmet has always been subject to some degree of contestation there, including instances and phases of social, political and legal attack (Weller 2022, Sect. 5.2). Within what has often been the highly fractured

© The Author(s) 2022 1 P. Weller, Hizmet in Transitions, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93798-0_1 nature of Turkish social, political and religious life, this has variously included from politicians and movements of the political left; from those on the nationalist right; from ‘Islamist’ groups; and from the military. However, following the emergence of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or, The Justice and Development Party) into national government in the 2002 elections, the social and political reach and influence of individuals and of organisations associated with Hizmet grew considerably. This was especially so in the early 2000s, during which it seemed to many external observers, as well as to some ‘insiders’ in both the AKP and Hizmet, that there might be at least some confluence of interest (see Sects. 4.1 and 4.2) between the value orientations of the Hizmet and the strategic positions apparently adopted by the AKP around such matters as the need to overcome Turkey’s cycle of repeated military coups and to strengthen its democratic structures, as well as an orientation towards full Turkish membership of the European Union (EU).

However, divergences gradually became clear and the history of contestation around Hizmet intensified exponentially from around 2013 onwards when, in reaction to charges about corruption concerning then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and some of his family, and the statements made by Fethullah Giilen in support of the Gezi Park demonstrations (see Sect. 4.4), the AKP government started to take increasingly restrictive and repressive actions against Hizmet organisations, especially its schools, accusing it under a derogatory and threatening name of being a Paralel Devlet Yapılanması (PDY or, Parallel State Structure). Attacks on Hizmet reached a new level intensity following the events of 15 July 2016 and following (see Sects. 4.4 and 4.5) with the, by then President, Erdogan and the AKP government charging Fethullah Giilen and Hizmet with responsibility, naming Hizmet as Fethullaha Terör Örgütü or FETÖ (Fethullahist Terrorist Organization), a charge which Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet strongly deny.

As a result of the campaign waged against it by the Turkish authorities and agencies, including beyond the borders of Turkey (Alliance for Shared Values 2016), Hizmet has, perhaps ironically, become even more well known internationally than previously. In many ways, the significance of Hizmet is highlighted not only by those sympathetic to it, but also by those who see it as potentially dangerous. Writing, for example, even from before July 2016, Holton and Lopez (2015) refer to Hizmet as “one of the best organized Islamic grass-roots organizations in the world” (p. 21) which is, however, now “attracting some long-overdue scrutiny” (p. 9).

They refer to “claims from former members of a cult-like structure; a highly segregated role for women; and a lavishly funded travel program to Turkey for selected officials from academia, government and law enforcement” (p. 10), while in the foreword to their work, the President of the Washington DC-based Centre for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney Jnr. (in Holton and Lopez 2015), evaluatively summarised the movement as being a “mix of sophisticated influence operation and Islamist supremacism guised as Turkish nationalism” (p. 5).

While this book focuses on the development and transition of Hizmet in Europe, a range of the issues being faced by it there are also occurring in other parts of the world. In parts of the Two Thirds World, the Turkish government and state has deployed economic, diplomatic and other pressures designed to discredit and close down or take over Hizmet-related organisations. Turkey’s Eurasian geopolitical context and significance as a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), its Customs Union arrangement with the EU and its long-standing candidacy for accession to membership of the EU means that how Hizmet emerged into global presence and activity; how it is dealing with extra-territorial pressures from the Turkish government and how it is charting a course for its future in Europe and beyond—a matter of wider economic, political and general public interest.

Thus far, the majority of studies on Hizmet have focused either on its birth and development in Turkey; its expansion into the Turkic former Soviet Republics; or more globally—often concentrating on its schools and pedagogical practice. The present book covers Hizmet in Europe in a broader way than other single-authored publications up to now. It is also the first monograph to address Hizmet’s development in Europe that has been completely researched and written following July 2016. It contends that to properly understand Hizmet in Europe, one has to situate it contextually in its Turkish historical and geographical origins; its emergence within the forms taken by Turkish diaspora in the European countries within which it has sought to integrate and, finally, its ongoing interactive engagement with the inspiration coming from Giilen’s teaching and practice as worked out within an overall hermeneutical circle of engagement in which Hizmet, in ways increasingly informed by critical reflection on the impact of and lessons to be drawn from what has happened to it in Turkey, feeds back again into the contextually influenced further development of Giilen’s teaching.

1.2 A RELIGIOUS STUDIES APPROACH AND THE “POLITICS OF NAMING”

The disciplinary approach of Religious Studies provides the main framework for this study. Within this approach is what is known as the “insideroutsider” problem in the study of religion (McCutcheon Ed. 1999) in which scholarly problems and opportunities are not seen as being exclusively associated with either “insider” or “outsider” perspectives. Indeed, in contrast to much mainstream of Sociology of Religion, where religions tend to be approached according to the kind of prior sociological theory adopted for understanding them, or of Theology, which usually entails the making and application of normative evaluative judgments, in the nonconfessional study of religion known broadly as “Religious Studies” there has been a well-established tradition of phenomenological approach to the understanding oflived religion among individuals and groups (Smart 1973).

Although this overall approach has been critiqued (Flood 1999), it argues that it is important, as far possible, to avoid imposing one’s own interpretative (whether theological or sociological) framework without first having sought to understand phenomena as fully as possible according to how they present themselves. Taking such an initial approach does not mean one can or should completely avoid responsibility for making evaluative judgements (as discussed in detail later in this chapter; in Chap. 6 of this book; and in Weller 2022, Chap. 6).

However, even before getting into matters of substance, it will be evident that such an approach has significance for the “politics of naming” in relation to what this author has chosen to call “Hizmet”—which is how the movement is known by those who are engaged in it, and sometimes also by those sympathetic to it. By contrast, the Turkish government, state authorities; the now nearly exclusively state-supporting media; as well as reports produced by government-aligned bodies, refer almost exclusively to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization or FETÖ (Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü); or the Presidency of the Religious Affairs of the Turkish Republic’s (2017) variant reference to the “Giilenist Terrorist Organization”.

Perhaps the most widespread description used by “outsiders” who are neither completely hostile, nor fully aligned with it, is that of “The Gtilen Movement”—thereby very much linking it to the person of Muhammed Fethullah Giilen, the Turkish Muslim teacher who inspired it. Indeed, one finds this usage among diverse “outsider” and “insider” monograph authors including, for example, Yavuz (2013); Ebaugh (2010); Tittensor (2014); Tee (2018) and Alam (2019). Some authors, such as El-Banna (2013), use a compound name such as “The Giilen-Inspired Hizmet”. Others have, on occasion, tried to promote a different kind of terminology, most notably Gürkan Celik’s and Pim Valkenberg’s (Eds. 2010) promotion of the use of the phrase in Dutch of Vrijwilligersbeweging (The Volunteers’ Movement) on the basis that this is “how Gülen himself describes it” (p. 10—English translation by the author of this book).

Nevertheless, even when a conscious politics of naming is at work, the terminology used is far from absolutely consistent, due to authors’ changing understandings over time; the context for, or readership of, a particular publication; and the position taken by the marketing departments of various publishers. However, many authors directly involved in Hizmet would be wary of any over-identification with the person of Fethullah Gülen that might be taken to be implied by use of the descriptor “The Gülen Movement”. This is on the basis of a concern that such terminology may imply that Hizmet has a much more centralised and directed organisation than is, in reality, the case. However, some “insiders” are more flexible and do use this phrase (as in Cetin 2010), although within that book the text often switches to the (at least apparently) more straightforward epithet of “The Movement”, a usage that, albeit without capitalisation, is also sometimes used in this book and its companion volume. At the other end of spectrum, Reşat Petek’s (2019) hostile to Gülen and Hizmet book incorporates “The Hizmet Movement” into its title, while seeking to link this more “insider” usage with the more negative and conspiratorial tropes of “The Puppet” and “The New Tool of the Global Forces” that characterise the rest of the title.

Such issues are not unique to the specific phenomenon being discussed here, in the sense that setting Hizmet within a wider comparative theoretical framework for understanding movements in general, and religiously inspired initiatives in particular, can arguably help to illuminate also aspects of its particular developmental trajectory. One such example might be taken from that part of the Christian tradition out of which the present author comes, and which is now generally known as “Baptist” (see also Weller 2017). Like those within Hizmet, the early Baptists did not call themselves that or understand themselves as founders of a new movement within Christianity but, rather, as trying to bring about the restoration of a more authentic expression of the Christian faith in comparison with what had resulted from the adoption by the Roman Emperor Constantine of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The label that was applied to Baptists and intentionally used with the aim of inciting hostility towards them was that of “Anabaptist”—a word which, in itself, contained a theologically interpretive critique of the baptismal practice of those to whom it was applied by placing the Greek root prefix ana (meaning, again) in front of the word “Baptist.” Theologically and sociologically speaking, this was intended to evoke fear of the kind of unbridled religious and social “enthusiasm” unleashed by a group of adult baptising theocratically oriented Christians who took part in the 1534-1535 German city of Münster experiment to establish a new society on the basis of the direct application of scriptural injunctions to hold all property in common, but which ended, among other things, in enforced polygamy (Kautsky 1879).

Just like the early Baptists, Giilen and those inspired by him to do Hizmet have always wanted to insist that they are not “innovating” in the sense of trying to create some kind of idiosyncratic version of Islam, still less to create some kind of a “cult” around Fethullah Giilen as an individual. At the same time, there are aspects of the respect shown to Fethullah Gülen by numbers of those who have been inspired by him that, especially when looked at from outside a (Turkish) enculturated and more broadly traditional Muslim understanding, could lead to such interpretations (see Weller 2022, Sect. 3.2).

Because of this, among those associated with Hizmet there can be considerable discomfort with a word such as “Giilenian” which, on occasion, the author of this book has used “for convenience” (Weller 2017, p. 134). However, Fethullah Giilen’s thinking and teaching (Weller 2022) are concerned with trying to uncover, develop and apply, in ways appropriate to the contemporary context, particular aspects of the Islamic tradition that is rooted in the sources of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad which have arguably become buried relative to other aspects, for both Muslims and others. Indeed, even where commentators identify a strongly Sufi flavour in Gtilen’s approach, Giilen himself has been at pains to stress that Sufism is the inner dimension of Islam itself and is therefore not to be separated from the Shariah. However, just as the epithet “Baptist” was one with which the “insiders” generally in time came to live, and eventually to adopt, on the basis of explaining what for them it does and does not mean, so also there are signs that, even if it is not felt by “insiders” to be ideal, a descriptor like the “Giilen Movement” is becoming an increasingly widespread shorthand way to describe a specific phenomenon within the development of a broader religious tradition.

1.3. SITUATING IN THE AUTHOR’S PREVIOUS RESEARCH AND THE WIDER LITERATURE

Not least because of the controversies that have developed around Hizmet, it is important to situate this study of Hizmet transparently within the author’s previous research on Hizmet and Fethullah Giilen, as well as the wider literature about Hizmet. This includes two previously co-edited books: the first edited by Weller and Yilmaz (2012a), containing two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Weller and Yilmaz 2012b, c) and two chapters by the author (Weller 2012a, b); the second co-edited by Barton et al. (2013a), containing two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Barton et al. 2013b, c) and one chapter by the author (Weller 2013). The majority of these chapters were based on papers that had first been presented in international conferences.