Interviewer: Yes mum.
Person: Yes thank you for passing the mic.
Person: Thank you very much, can you hear me?
Interviewer: Yes
Person: I’d like to ask you about the big debate in Turkey going on right now. Its many people started thinking that Gülen movement actually became a strong political force in the country, even stronger than the government. What is your opinion of this?
Graham Fuller: Well I’m not sure I would agree with the statement that it’s become more powerful than the government because I don’t think it’s functioning on the same level at all. I mean it’s essentially focusing on social change to instill the values of Islam perhaps for social improvement and [betterness] and greater awareness and responsibility of the individual as a Muslim to improve society in anyway they can. So I think it’s operating on a drastically different level than government. I don’t think it would, wants to supplant government in that sense. There maybe people from the Gülen Movement who would be happy to go into government with certain particular ideas but that’s a distinct aspect. Secondly I think I forgot the other point I was going to make on this but. I yeah I think the, some of the politicization or concern for the politics of the Gülen Movement came with the strong and extralegal activities of the Turkish military to crush it and suppress it through physical means or semi legal means or extralegal means. But this brought a greater political dimension to it perhaps. I suspect that political dimension may diminish now because the force of the military in moving in extralegal ways internally has diminished, is diminishing bit by bit, slowly [IB] as it goes. But so I hope and I suspect that the need for political action or thinking even about politics will perhaps become less important in the movement. And they will think more about the practical concerns of the education inspiration guidance in the broader sense to society and the enlightenment of the society.
Interviewer: Yes Ma’am.
Person: Graham I want to go back a little bit to. I want to go back talking about the resentment that causes some of the things you talked about as historically from the east towards the west and vice versa. And as you know [I always] come from sort of humanistic, psychological point of view. There is the anger but anger is like a secondary emotion under it could there be like the fear? And what I’m thinking of in terms of because of the history that you talked about that Islam or Muslims or the Middle East or the rest of the world I don’t know is afraid that history will repeat itself. And somehow it has with the invasion of Iraq and you know being.