As with other community-based organizations and social movements, the financial resources raised and deployed by the Gülen Movement have been the subject of intense curiosity. However, neither in academic journals nor in newspapers have the economic aspects of the Movement been examined on the basis of evidence and consistently applied reasoning. Or, to say it in a straightforward way, the curiosity has not been of the best, disinterested kind. In this series of articles I will try to discuss the financial dimension of the Gülen Movement strictly on the basis of concrete findings and analysis (not speculation and ill-informed guesswork). By way of background for future articles, I will present here a very brief literature review. But first, a few reflections on the nature of the Movement, misconceptions about which are the reason for the unhealthy speculation about its finances will be touched upon here.
People wrongly infer from the sheer scale of the Movement that it must be centrally and hierarchically managed, perhaps like a political party. Then, they speculate, it must have secretive donors who are providing funds so as to influence the direction and agenda of the Movement. Or they think it must be (or have become) like some sort of big business corporation with a board of directors, accruing and directing funds, and “executing” a strategy, a business plan (and, no doubt, giving themselves “performance bonuses”!) Volunteers in the Movement patiently point out that it is a self-organizing, self-sustaining grassroots movement, with no political or corporate headquarters making and executing grand “take-over” plans. But, people say, there is a direction to what the Movement does, a coherence in how its different activities support and complement each other – a pattern. Now, yes, that is true. But it is a gross error to suppose that, without a central leadership and management, there cannot be direction and pattern in the activities of large numbers of individuals. In fact, direction and pattern are emergent phenomena, of a kind regularly observed in the natural world.
Patterns of human behaviour are not necessarily the result of obedience to a willed command, but simply a shared response to the same experience. So it is in a grassroots movement: one individual decides to give their money and time to a cause, and a neighbour sees and does the same, then another neighbour, and so on. Because humans are not birds or fish, they can ask about and follow each other’s motives as well as actions, and so ideas also coalesce with experience to inform well-directed, patterned behaviour. This is the right way to picture and understand the mechanics and dynamism of how a phenomenon like the Gülen Movement emerges, grows, matures. When we look to competent, fact-based, objective studies of the Movement, that is precisely how it is presented. Naturally, the explanatory terms are more learned than my account of why a few birds veer off at the edge of the flock then strive to rejoin it, but the underlying principle is the same:
As well as the theories just mentioned, Ebaugh holds that the Turkish/Islamic tradition of giving and the political-historical culture of Turkey need to be thoroughly comprehended in order to get a full picture of the economic bases of the Gülen Movement. The relevance for the Movement of the Islamic tradition of philanthropy can easily be grasped from the following observation by Graham Fuller, political analyst for the RAND Corporation: “Funding comes from within the community and from wealthy businessmen for whom building a school has become the modern pious equivalent of building a mosque” (2). Ebaugh extends this argument to include the role, in donations to the Movement, of Islamic concepts/practices such as sadaka, zekat, kurban and vakif.
Koc and Ebaugh argue (3) on the basis of their research in Ankara, that dozens of businessmen, and others in the Movement donate between 10% and 70% of their annual income (ranging from $20,000 to $300,000). Furthermore, Koc and Ebaugh found that for some individuals, the motivation to give far exceeded their means to do so: “One man, in particular, said he gives 40% of his income every year which is about $100,000; however, he said he would like to give 95% but is not able to do so and still maintain himself and his family”. On the basis of a separately researched study, Koc concludes that donations to the Movement largely consist of small amounts given by many people, rather than large amounts given by a few.
In The Gülen Movement, Ebaugh draws the reader’s attention to local circles (sohbets) which can be characterized as the nucleus of the Movement. These local circles are the places where socialization takes place, where issues of concern are raised by the participants and ongoing and prospective projects for the circle are discussed. Ebaugh’s principal comment on these circles is that they are naturally self-organizing structures, relying on links through locality and profession – people sharing the same neighbourhood and job come together and form their own groups without any top–down direction.
As a last point, I’d like to mention the working of a charity named “Kimse Yok Mu”. It was established following a suggestion from Gülen himself. Koc maps out the areas of interest of this organization: “sister family projects, aid in kind (food, fuel, clothing, and health), educational aid, foreign aid, and other aid” (4). This charity has two basic financial resources: donations in kind and donations in cash. The former consist of supporters’ labour (donation of their time), participation in services, and donation of goods; the latter encompasses in-person donations, online donations, mobile phone text messages, kiosks in streets and charity boxes. To give an example, annual donations for 2007 were nearly $13 million and the number of voluntary participants each month was 7000. These figures give a clear idea about the socio-cultural disposition of Turkish society, which forms the backbone of the Gülen Movement.
In subsequent pieces in this series, I will discuss in more detail the terms used in the arguments above, on the economic aspect of Gülen Movement.
Published on A Thought, 18 May 2011, Wednesday
