Caroline Tee

What is the Gülen Movement and why is Turkey's President Erdoğan so convinced that the organisation and its charismatic leader were behind the failed military coup of 15th July 2016? The Gülen, or Hizmet, movement in Turkey was until recently the country's most powerful and affluent religious organisation. At its head is the exiled Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen, who leads from a gated compound in the Pocono Mountains of the USA.The movement's central tenet is that Muslims should engage positively with modernity, especially through mastering the sciences. At hundreds of Gülen-run schools and universities, not only in Turkey but also worldwide and particularly in the United States, instructors have cultivated the next generation of Muslim bankers, biologists, software engineers and entrepreneurs. In this groundbreaking study, Caroline Tee, an expert on the Gülen Movement, analyses the complex attitudes of Gülen and his followers towards secular modernity. Considered against the backdrop of Turkish politics, Gülenist engagement with modern science is revealed as a key source of the influence the movement has exerted.

This article investigates the construction and transmission of charisma through online channels and its role in the formation of religious identities. Mindful of Max Weber’s observation that charisma inhabits the relationship
between a leader and his/her followers, I argue for a critical reappraisal of the theoretical model in the light of the ubiquity in the twenty-first century of new, virtual forms of social encounter. I focus my analysis on the Christian creationist movement in the United States and particularly on an influential leader called Ken Ham. Using digital ethnographic methods, I show how Ham constructs charisma online and how a virtual community forms itself around his charismatic claims. I illustrate how this virtual
community intersects with offline worlds and suggest that the theme park attractions that Ham’s organisation runs (Creation Museum, Ark Encounter) are imbued with deflected charisma by virtue of their association with his
online avatar.

Since the failed coup of 15 July 2016, for which it is held responsible,
the Gülen Movement (GM) has been in crisis. With no foreseeable
future in its homeland, the GM is now tasked with regrouping
abroad. This article investigates the GM in London, a city that,
for various reasons, is likely to become a significant centre for
Gülenist activity in the post-coup era. Taking the Dialogue Society
(DS) as its focus, it investigates the prospects of the GM’s survival
by analyzing its activities, both before and after the coup, in light
of Mamdani’s discussion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims in the post-
9/11 world. The article shows how the GM has established itself as
a voice of ‘good’ Islam in the context of British debates on Islam
and radicalization. It suggests that the public presence the GM
has established for itself through its public engagement activities
in the UK could constitute a central part of its fight back against
President Erdoğan, and be catalytic to its creation of a dynamic
future in exile.

This paper explores the teaching of natural science subjects in high schools associated with the Gülen-Hizmet movement in Turkey. It focuses on the apparent reconciliation of scientific learning in a pervasive, albeit unofficial, Sunni Islamic religious culture. The framework for such an accommodation is found in the teachings of Fethullah Gülen and his predecessor, Said Nursi. Following Nursi, Gülen encourages scientific pursuit, and intellectual knowledge in general, as a pious and spiritually meritorious act. Drawing on fieldwork conducted at two Hizmet-affiliated high schools in Turkey, this article explores the “sanctification” of science and learning in the Gülen Movement by highlighting the principle of fedakarlık (self-sacrifice), as the primary motivation of the teaching staff. Focusing also on the schools’ highly disciplined and competitive learning environments (as exemplified in preparations for the prestigious International Science Olympiads), the article suggests that although teacher commitment and prestigious competitive awards bolster the Hizmet schools’ market competitiveness, they fail in actually producing students who pursue careers in natural science fields. By contrast, this article concludes that the movement’s engagement with science, at least at present, is less interested in furthering scientific inquiry than it is in equipping what Gülen has called a ‘Golden Generation’ with the tools it needs to compete with secularist rivals in Turkey.

In this paper, I explore some approaches in the contemporary Alevi Movement to semi-official discourses on religion, citizenship and belonging in Turkey. I study the revival activities of an Alevi group from Erzincan called the Dervis Cemal Ocak, which I find to be characterized by an emphasis on its Turkish ethno-cultural roots and Islamic religious identity. The group is following the national Cem Vakfi’s definition of Alevilik according to these terms, and reflects an openness to negotiation with both official institutions of state authority as well as semi-official public discourses that other Alevi groups do not. I analyze this conciliatory approach within the Alevi Movement in light of hegemonic majority discourses on national and religious identity; I explore post-migration geographies, ethnicity and the Kurdish issue as well as internal factors within the Alevi community regarding religious legitimization and the sanctity of its leaders (dede).

These ‘notes from the field’ report upon an ongoing comparative research project into the Yezidis, both in their traditional heartlands and in western Europe. The author reports that intensive fieldwork yields a much higher degree of flexibility and variety in Yezidi traditions than has often been acknowledged, whereby political events as much as diverse religious currents have influenced the shape of Yezidi thought. The project is still on-going but even the preliminary ethnographic findings described here lead him to doubt the adequacy of much that is hitherto accepted as reliable in the current literature.