The Gulen (or, as it is recently being called, the Hizmet) Movement has been both praised and criticized by academics and the media. In this post I discuss recent criticisms levelled by Binnaz Toprak and Ahmet Sik towards the Movement. My aim is to show readers the different perspectives of the critiques on the Gulen Movement.
One of the academics who criticizes the Movement is Professor Binnaz Toprak of Bahcesehir University. Currently she is active in party politics as a CHP (Republican People’s Party) member of parliament in Istanbul. Toprak states that the inability of the state to conduct an effective social policy has left a gap that the Gulen community among others come forward to fill, as a powerful alternative to the state. She presents the activities of the Gulen Movement as “taking advantage of” the inadequacy of the state’s mechanisms for dealing with large scale social policy issues and exploiting this opportunity to extend its power by attracting lower classes to its circles. Although Toprak, as well as some others, are harsh in their criticism of the Movement, calling it a threat, other academics disagree. For example, Professor Elisabeth Ozdalga of Middle East Technical University, states that “when public institutions fail to integrate citizens, the demand on other organisations and communities to fill this void increases. The Gulen community plays a significant role in this.” These are two different perspectives from two sociologists. For Ozdalga the Gulen Movement functions as what would be recognized in the West as a “civil society” movement. As such, Ozdalga does not see the Movement as a threat or even as in competition with the state. If anything, the Gulen Movement’s activities complement the state’s function of integrating its citizens.
There have been allegations also that members of the Gulen Movement are, in their words, “infiltrating” themselves into important positions in the military, police and state bureaucracy. In response to these suspicious Professor John Esposito states in an interview that:
… but I see nothing suspicious about that. This suggests that they were not welcomed in the military and the police, and this is exclusivism. In the old days you were called politically Islamist or religiously oriented, and if that was known then you might not be able to hold that kind of positions and you might not be able to get into top universities.However, since democracy has not yet permeated all levels of the bureaucratic mindset, there are still a considerable number of people in the state bureaucracy who insist on regarding all grassroots movements as a potential or actual threat to the state. They regularly repeat that Turkey is a newly founded secular-nation state which has not yet been able fully to realize its policy goal of national unity and that as such all non-governmental communities are automatically suspect and potentially a threat against so-called unity of the state.
Among the more recent criticisms levelled at the Gulen Movement is that it has accrued political strength in Turkey, which has allowed it to censor publications critical of the Movement and punish their authors or, as the critics put it: “whoever touches, gets burned”. They claim that it has become impossible to criticize the Movement citing the case of Ahmet Sik, a journalist who was recently arrested and questioned on charges of being a member of a “deep state” terrorist organization known in Turkey as Ergenekon. Supporters of Ahmet Sik claim that this is a smokescreen and that the real reason for his arrest is his unpublished book which was critical of the Gulen Movement. The problem with this claim is two-fold. One it requires the public to believe that the state Prosecutors who brought the charges, the Police who arrested him and the numerous courts who have consistently ruled for Ahmet Sik to be held on remand while the trial continues are all somehow colluding to silence critics of Fethullah Gulen and or the Gulen Movement by concocting evidence to connect them with a terrorist organisation. This is a deep order to believe in. The second problem is that the claim that critics of the Gulen Movement are being silenced is totally unfounded. There are over thirty books being sold in Turkish bookstores about the Gulen Movement that are far more critical and offensive towards the Gulen Movement. Be from those that allege that Fethullah Gulen is not a secret cardinal to those that he is a religious fundamentalist. Some of these books were found to be libellous and defamatory towards Fethullah Gulen and its authors have been fined by Turkish courts. Even these continue to be printed and published in Turkey. What is more a cursory scan of Turkish mainstream media shows that the Movement is easily criticised, be in printed or broadcast media. For more on this I’d encourage readers to look at the news story titled ‘If whoever touched Gülen was doomed, we would have been ashes by now’ by Fatih Vural in Today’s Zaman. The article lists critical books on Gulen currently sold in Turkish bookstores and more importantly interviews with some its authors and publishers.
In a country where issues are so convoluted and complex as in Turkey, making sense of any matter, even its football as recently shown, is no easy task. In such a context there is an awful lot of shadow boxing going on and we must therefore be particularly acute to the fact that there can be different perspectives to and different motives for levelling accusations against the Gulen Movement.
Published on A Thought, 15 August 2011, Friday
