Soner Çaǧaptay must think very highly of Fethullah Gulen.
In a recent article[1] in which he makes scattershot accusations against Fethullah Gulen and current ruling party of Turkey, he makes Gulen out to be some kind of mastermind, pulling strings from rural Pennsylvania to orchestrate a world-wide conspiracy. In Çaǧaptay’s mind, Gulen is so brilliant that he can control millions of people and vast amounts of money over a period of thirty years without leaving any evidence except for one ambiguous (and possibly edited) videotape and a wake of panicky innuendo.
I have nothing to say about Çaǧaptay’s account of the Ergenekon affair, as I have no expertise on politics or current affairs in Turkey.Gulen and the movement that bears his name, however, is something I know a thing or two about, from both scholarship and firsthand experience. And I am not alone; a great deal of social science had been done about the so-called Gulen movement, published in selective academic venues[2]. The Gulen movement I see bears absolutely no resemblance to the paranoid fantasy concoted by Çaǧaptay. Let me address his accusations one by one:
Accusation #1: Gulen has manipulated the current government into turning against the military. He says “A mountain has been moved in Turkish politics.; All shots against the military are now fair game, including those below the belt. The force behind this dramatic change is the Fethullah Gulen Movement (FGH), an ultraconservative political faction that backs the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).” First, there is no evidence that the movement has caused any change in politics at all. Further, it is just plain silly to say the movement has done anything at all. That would be like saying “the evangelical movement is stealing my mail.” Movements don’t act. People do, and organizations, but movements don’t. If Çaǧaptay knows of any particular people who have made this change in politics, he should name names and cite particulars. That means also that the movement doesn’t back any political party, never mind the AKP. Some, perhaps many, individuals in the movement, do, but the movement itself doesn’t back anything. I don’t have anything to say about the gratuitous and inflammatory “ultraconservative” label.
Accusation #2: “Today, it is those who criticize the Gulen movement who get burned.” What is his one example of this? The military leaders arrested in the Ergenekon case. So again, a shadowy movement influences a government to use all the forces at its disposal to punish its critics? It is far more likely that the actions of the government are their own, done because those military people were a threat to the current government. There is no need to look further, for someone pulling strings behind the scenes. It is even possible that those who have been arrested are guilty of the crimes with which they are charged. But all Çaǧaptay can give us to connect Gulen to the whole business is that the officials prosecuting the case “are thought by some to be Gulen sympathizers.” How handy the passive voice is in excusing us from naming names.
Accusation #3: The AKP has appointed several “Gulenists” to high office in exchange for political support from its members. Again I ask Çaǧaptay, can you name names? Do you have any evidence at all of a quid pro quo? All he offers us is that some people he thinks are members of the movement have both supported the AKP and been appointed to office; there is not a shred of evidence of the broader causal claim he makes.
This shadowy conspiracy imagined by Çaǧaptay is nothing like the movement that I have observed and worked with for the last five years. All I have seen, in America, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and eleven cities in Turkey is a voluntary association of people trying to marshal their resources to do good. They build schools, so called “Gulen Schools“, and hospitals. When you look at the activities of those schools, you find administrators and teachers who want the children to be academically prepared, especially in the sciences, and also to be good citizens. There is not a hint of Islamist indoctrination. Moreover, you find parents and students (Christians, Muslims, and Secularists) testifying to the high quality of the education they receive. In America, the members of the movement are largely dedicated to efforts of interfaith dialogue. In my five years of association with the movement, and almost daily contact with its members, I have never found even a whiff of Islamism. In fact when Islamism comes up in discussions, they shake their heads sadly, dismayed at the extremists’ misuse of Islam. There are no orders coming down from on high, no requirement of conformity, not even any jointly owned assets. It is, after all, the Gulen movement, not the Gulen corporation. If this is a conspiracy it is better-managed than any conspiracy in history, with no leaks, no schisms, and no defectors.
The critics of the movement are also less than meets the eye. If you track down the sources used by the vocal critics of the movement, they come down to three types: speculative expressions of fear, without evidence; neo-cons with no knowledge of Turkey, Islam, or the region; and Çaǧaptay himself. His sources, when he bothers to cite them, tend to come from the first two groups. And if you examine the neo-cons’ sources, they have a tendency to evaporate, too. One of the favorite sources is an article in Middle East Quarterly[3] by an “expert” who thinks “hocaefendi” (a term of respect used by people in the movement to refer to Gulen) can reasonably be translated “master lord.” Never mind that “efendim” is routinely used like “hello” when you answer the phone, and is also routinely used to ask someone whom you didn’t hear well to repeat himself, like “excuse me?” Never mind that “hoca” is the perfectly ordinary term used for teachers. A much more accurate translation would be “teacher sir.” Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Turkey could not have committed such a blunder.
It is certainly true that Turkey’s secular democracy is a precious thing in the region, well worth defending. It is certainly true that Islamism is a threat to peace and security everywhere. But neither of those truths should turn us into frightened children who jump at shadows.
Mark Owen Webb is chairman of the Philosophy Department at Texas Tech University, and a specialist in philosophy of religion. He received his PhD from Syracuse University in 1991.
[1]“What’s Really Behind Turkey’s Coup Arrests?” Foreign Policy, February 25, 2010.
[2]See, for example, The Gulen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam, by Helen Rose Ebaugh (Springer, 2009)
[3]Rachel Sharon-Krespin, “Fethullah Gulen’s Grand Ambition: Turkey’s Islamist Danger,” Middle East Quarterly 16 (2009), 55-66.