Who is Fethullah Gülen?

"Turkey won't be frightened with this kind of uprising and Turkey cannot be governed from Pennsylvania…”  To whom was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan referring when he said this after the abortive coup in Turkey?  That would be Fethullah Gülen.  Who is this guy, and why does Erdoğan (pronounced er-do-wan) have such enmity for him?  Gülen, 75, is an influential Muslim cleric who has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.  At one time, he was an ally of Erdoğan and helped him and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) come to power in 2002.  He draws on the traditions of Anatolian Sufism, a mystical strain of Islam usually portrayed as being moderate.  In an article written by Rachel Sharon-Krespin for the winter 2009 edition of Middle East Quarterly, she wrote “he presents himself and his movement as the modem-day version of tolerant, liberal Anatolian Sufism and has used the literature of great Sufi thinkers such as Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Yunus Emre, pretending to share their moderate teachings.” Gülen is considered to be one of the world's leading moderate voices of Islam.  Erdoğan and his government consider Gülen to be a terrorist.

   

Gülen fled Turkey in 1999 because of accusations he tried to overthrow Turkey’s secular government.  He was acquitted of all charges in 2008.  During his trial, a video of clips from his sermons to his followers aired on Turkish TV.  In this video, he said the following: 

“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers…you must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the constitutional institutions in Turkey.” 

Gülen leads a movement called Hizmet, which literally translated means “the service.”  Hizmet is often portrayed as a peaceful face of Islam, one that advocates interfaith dialog, religious tolerance and the establishment of secular and democratic government in Turkey.  Hizmet has a substantial presence in Turkish society, including the military, police, judiciary and the media.  It runs a network of schools (approximately 1,000 across 150 countries, including almost 100 in the United States) that are praised for their academic rigor and their commitment to spreading Turkish language and culture.  Critics [and there are many] believe these schools serve the same function as the madrassas do in Pakistan.  They allege these schools indoctrinate children in the tenets of radical Islam and prepare adolescents for the lslamization of the world.   Some governments [especially Turkey’s] see Hizmet as a threat.  The Turkish government sees Gülen’s followers as a threat to use their government positions to undermine them and take power.  British lawyer Robert Amsterdam maintains a blog where he documents all things related to Fethullah Gülen [http://robertamsterdam.com/].  As one reads his blogs, one finds that perhaps Fethullah Gülen is not who he presents himself to the public [Full disclosure - Robert Amsterdam is on retainer for Erdoğan]. 

Hizmet and the AKP were once allies. Both groups had a common enemy, the Kemalist establishment as represented in the military and the government bureaucracy.  But since Erdoğan’s ascension to power they have grown apart.  The two organizations broke into open conflict in 2013, when Erdoğan and other government officials [including Erdoğan’s son Bilal] were targeted in corruption scandals.  One scandal was a “gold for oil” deal between Turkey and Iran that was created for Iran to evade American sanctions against Iran.  This scandal also involved bribery and money laundering.  Erdoğan’s phone had been tapped, and in one recording he is heard to be telling his son to get rid of huge sums of cash stashed at his home.  This and other embarrassing recordings were shared on YouTube.

 

Another source of conflict between Gülen and Erdoğan is education.  In November 2013 Erdoğan’s government announced that it planned to shut down Gülen’s network of schools in 2015.   Because of Gülen’s schools Turkey [and Gülen himself] enjoy prestige and influence in Central Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.  In a January 2014 Op-Ed piece in Foreign Policy Journal, Bayram Balci [from the Carnegie Middle East Program] described Hizmet and the Gülen schools as “a wonderful soft power instrument for Ankara.”  But now Turkey is not big enough for both Gülen and Erdoğan.  Erdoğan claimed his problem with scandals was a Gülenist retaliation for his intention to shut down the schools.  He also claimed the police and judiciary were riddled with members of Hizmet.  In May 2016 Erdoğan officially designated Hizmet as a terrorist group.  Prior to this designation, the Turkish government seized or closed down numerous assets related to Gülen, including media firms and a bank.  Erdoğan accused Gülen of conspiring to overthrow his government by building a network of supporters in the media, judiciary, police and education.  Which brings us to the July 16^th coup attempt. 

The coup failed, but it made for some great television.  I first heard about it at work and started to follow the Sky News live feed on YouTube.  Before I went home for the day I saw Erdoğan giving an interview to a private TV station.  That told me the rebels didn’t have him.  How do you take power without arresting the guy from whom you’re seizing power?  By the time I got home I wondered aloud whether the coup would turn out like the August 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.  It wasn’t long before I had my answer.  Erdoğan called the failed coup “a gift from Allah” and it didn’t take long for the government to start rounding up suspects and purging the system.  Erdoğan needed an excuse to move against enemies real and imagined, and the failed coup gave him one. 

 

The size and scope of the purge [see RFE/RL’s graphic below] tells me the AKP had their “lists” of people to detain, sack, fire [pick your favorite verb], and that perhaps, just perhaps, this coup was staged.  I’m reminded of two incidents in history where a ruler either “left the scene” or acted like he was loosening his iron-fisted grip on society, only to change their minds and tighten their grip on society. 

Ivan IV [“the Terrible”] - When Ivan IV became Tsar, he was only three years old.  His mother Elena acted as regent until she too died when Ivan was eight.  It wasn’t until he was sixteen that he was actually crowned a “Tsar of All the Russias.”  In the interim, he had to reign while the nobility, the boyars, exercised the real power.  The boyars did not treat young Ivan very well.  He remembered this maltreatment.  Seventeen years later [in December 1564], Ivan had enough of the boyars.  He packed all his stuff, abdicated, and left.  Ivan wrote two letters – one in which he accused the boyars of treason, the other which absolved the rest of the population from the treachery of the boyars.  The boyars tried ruling in Ivan’s absence but couldn’t.  Muscovites sent an envoy to Ivan [who was in Aleksandrova Sloboda, about 120 miles northeast of Moscow], begging him to return.  Ivan agreed to return under the condition that he be allowed to deal with the boyars as he wished without interference from the Church or the boyar council.  Ivan got what he wanted.  On his return, Ivan divided his realm into two parts – the Oprichnina, which was designated as crown land under his immediate control, and the Zemschina, which he left to boyars and bureaucrats he trusted to administer.  Ivan also created the Oprichniki.  They were Ivan’s secret police.  These are the guys who did Ivan’s dirty work – mass repression, executions of Ivan’s enemies, and confiscation of boyar lands.  This was the beginning of the absolute monarchy in Russia. 


Mao – The Hundred Flowers Movement was an idea Mao had in the 1950s.  The idea, stemming from a quote of his to “let a hundred flowers bloom,” was to allow people to openly discuss the country’s problems.  Mao welcomed “constructive criticism.”  Those who were dumb enough to take Mao at his word actually made criticisms.  The party began to receive letters.  Wall posters that criticized the government appeared everywhere.  Students and teachers, writers and lawyers began to criticize party leaders.  They pointed out the hypocrisy of corrupt party leaders who lived well while the great unwashed suffered a low standard of living.  When this happened, Mao reversed course and began the Anti-Rightist Campaign [1957].  By the hundreds of thousands people were arrested.  Many critics lost their jobs and were forced to do manual labor in the country.  Other critics were sent to prison.  They were the lucky ones as others were executed.  Mao later said of the Hundred Flowers Movement that he had “enticed the snakes out of their lairs.”  When the Great Leap Forward [1958-61] started the following year to try and turn China from an agrarian economy into an industrialized and collectivized, socialist society, nobody would dare tell the emperor he had no clothes as millions died and the economy regressed. 

I don’t think it is mere coincidence that so many people are being fired as a result of the failed coup.  These mass dismissals just happen to come in those fields where Erdoğan claims the Gülen movement dominates Turkish society.  In addition to demanding Gülen’s extradition from the United States, Erdoğan is also asking other countries to follow Turkey’s lead regarding the Gülen schools.  According to RFE/RL, Uzbekistan closed their schools in the early 2000s, Turkmenistan in the early 2010s, and Tajikistan last year.  Russia has put their Gülen schools under state control.  And now, Turkish lawmakers declared a three-month state of emergency.  Erdoğan asked for sweeping new powers to expand his crackdown on all things Gülen.  Before the coup attempt, Erdoğan had been accused of autocratic conduct, but now he can extend detention time for “suspects” and issue decrees without parliamentary approval.  According to Al Jazeera, curfews could be enforced, and gatherings and protests could be banned without official consent.  Media could also be restricted, while security personnel could conduct searches of persons, vehicles or properties and confiscate potential evidence.  If this sounds familiar, read Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933.  It looks like the mask has been ripped away and the real dictatorship has begun.