Goals of the Gulen Movement
What exactly does the Gulen Movement hope to accomplish by establishing organizations and schools in over a hundred countries around the world?
What is the purpose of the over 100 charter schools that the movement is running in the United States?
What does the Gulen Movement hope to accomplish inside Turkey?
These questions have been difficult to answer mainly because the Gulen Movement goes to great lengths to disguise its goals. Gulenists would like their movement to be seen as a civic movement, or social movement. They prefer this description because it minimizes controversy.
Outside observers, however, have noted that the movement appears to have political, religious and economic goals.
STRATFOR Global Intelligence Special Report, Aug 23, 2010
"Islam, Secularism and the Battle for Turkey's Future"
http://www.brighteningglance.org/on-turkey.html
“Inside Turkey, the Gulen Movement follows a determined agenda that aims to replace the Kemalist elite and transform Turkey into a more religiously conservative society. Outside Turkey, Gulen presents itself as a multifaith global organization working to bring businesses, religious leaders, politicians, journalists and average citizens together. Whatever its public relations moves, the Gulen movement is at base just one more player jockeying for power in Turkey."
Irish Times Jan 28, 2010 Ethiopian schools put Turkey on curriculum
"Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor at the University of Utah, who has co-edited a book on the Gulen phenomenon, describes the movement as the most powerful force in Turkey and says its main goal has been the “Islamisation” of Turkish society.
“ 'When the schools became successful, they decided to expand them and use them to generate international legitimacy [by stressing] that they are not Islamic but rather humanitarian with the purpose of building bridges across different cultures.' ..... Yavuz argues that there is a wider agenda as manifested by its increasingly global reach. ..... ' The movement, which is rooted in selective vision of the glorious Ottoman past, has its own imperial vision of turning Turkey into a global power,' he says."
In his 2009 Master's Thesis in Anthropology at the University of Arizona, Ufuk Coskun noted that "There also seems to be some truth to secularists’ claims that the Gülen movement is attempting to infiltrate Turkish government offices, in order to gain influence."
Bayram Balci's article "Fethullah Gulen's Missionary Schools in Central Asia and their Role in the Spreading of Turkism and Islam" (Religion, State and Society, Vol. 31 No. 2, 2003) describes the secretively missionary nature of the Gulen Movement's schools in the former Soviet republics of central Asia.
In his 2009 PhD Thesis "Globalization and Marketized Islam in Turkey: The Case of Fethullah Gulen" (University of California Santa Cruz) Joshua Hendrick discusses in detail the political and economic goals of the Gulen Movement:
"In addition to regular visits by AKP dignitaries including Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, GM institutions in the US are regular hosts of very influential people in American politics. (...)
"After attending a number of these events a senior confidant of Fethullah Gulen who is a Zaman columnist and original member of the GYV contradicted his friends by explaining, 'All these activities show that a very powerful Turkish lobby is being established in the US. This new dialogue, which will open a new page in Turkish-US relations, is as important as Turkey's EU bid.' "
"In the interests of simultaneously promoting Islam, Turkey, and GM-affiliated Turkish businesses, the Rumi Forum locates sponsors and hosts events that specifically target people of influence in the DC area and among national political representatives. Its efforts are supported by the efforts of the American Turkish Friends Association (ATFA) in Fairfax , VA; which also works in conjunction with numerous other GM-affiliated institutions from the Istanbul Center in Atlanta, to the Turkish Cultural Center in New York City, to the Niagara Foundation In Chicago. These institutions, together with Houston’s Institute for Interfaith Dialog, the Raindrop Foundation, and the Gulen Institute, sit at the center of the GM’s American network, and serve as models for new institutions in college towns and major cities around the US."
Hendrick's thesis is a very worthwhile read for understanding in detail how the Gulen Movement works towards these goals.
The specific question of how the publicly-funded Gulen charter schools in the United States serve the Gulen Movement is addressed here on our companion site.
