Volunteer website serves as reference tool about Hizmet movement

Sevgi Akarçeşme

A website established and run by a group of Turkish volunteers based on the West Coast of the United States which aims to provide the most accurate and up-to-date source of information and news about the Hizmet movement has been attracting increasing attention globally.

The web site, hizmetmovement.com, collects news stories, articles and analyses about the movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and has already become a reliable reference source for people around the world who want to be kept informed about the movement.

The administrators of the website, who prefer to remain anonymous as they do not want to advertise themselves, are professionals who study or work mostly in California. The purpose of the establishment of the website, according to them, is to provide convenient information regarding the movement from a single source. They believe that presenting all articles and news in one website with regular updates brings advantages to those who want to research the movement. The administrators say they are careful about picking “quality” texts but they do not necessarily include positive content, as long as the critics are not “malicious.”

The Hizmet movement, which is known as the “Gülen movement” around the world, has been generally referred to by the former name in Turkish following a symposium held in Los Angeles in 2009.

The website adds content about the movement and the institutions that are affiliated with it such as the Turkish schools around the world, the aid organization Kimse Yok Mu (Is Anybody There) and the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON). It had visitors from 113 different countries in March 2014, sometimes receives interesting requests regarding the Hizmet movement. Visitors from countries such as Ethiopia and Pakistan have asked for the establishment of new Turkish schools in their countries, a Somali Swedish citizen asked for the movement to organize an aid campaign for his country of origin, some visitors ask how to learn Turkish and some inform the website about their new publications.

Following the interest that the English language website received, a blog in Spanish has also been launched. It was followed by similar blogs in Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic. Soon, a blog in Russian will be launched by volunteers as well.

The Twitter accounts of the web site in different languages are as follows: @HizmetMovement , @Hizmet_Espanol, @Hizmet_Chinese, @HizmetPortugues and @Hizmet_Arabiyah

Published on Today's Zaman, 18 April 2014, Friday