1.1 The Focus of the Book

This book sets out to offer the reader an understanding of the origins and development of what it argues is one of the most dynamic Islamically inspired civil society movements in contemporary Europe and of how this movement, known among those who seek to live it as Hizmet (from a Turkish word meaning ‘service’), is currently undergoing a period of what could be quite significant transitions for its present and future.

Inspired by the teaching and practice of the Turkish Sunni Muslim Islamic scholar of the Hanafi school, Fethullah Gülen, this movement began in Turkey in the 1960s. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Gülen encouraged the spread of Hizmet into the Turkic world of Central Asia and then beyond, including into other continents. Hizmet has therefore developed a global footprint, including in Europe. During the early 1960s, large numbers of people of Turkish origin had migrated to Europe to fill the labour shortages of the post–Second World War period (Abadan-Unat 2011). Some of these sought to connect with the Hizmet initiatives that were developing a considerable momentum in Turkey and, by the early 1970s, Fethullah Gülen and other leading figures from Turkey originally inspired by him visited Europe.

Although this book is not focused on Hizmet’s original homeland of Turkey, Hizmet has always been subject to some degree of contestation there, including instances and phases of social, political and legal attack (Weller 2022, Sect. 5.2). Within what has often been the highly fractured nature of Turkish social, political and religious life, this has variously included from politicians and movements of the political left; from those on the nationalist right; from ‘Islamist’ groups; and from the military. However, following the emergence of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or, The Justice and Development Party) into national government in the 2002 elections, the social and political reach and influence of individuals and of organisations associated with Hizmet grew considerably. This was especially so in the early 2000s, during which it seemed to many external observers, as well as to some ‘insiders’ in both the AKP and Hizmet, that there might be at least some confluence of interest (see Sects. 4.1 and 4.2) between the value orientations of the Hizmet and the strategic positions apparently adopted by the AKP around such matters as the need to overcome Turkey’s cycle of repeated militarycoups and to strengthen its democratic structures, as well as an orientation towards full Turkish membership of the European Union (EU).

However, divergences gradually became clear and the history of contestation around Hizmet intensified exponentially from around 2013 onwards when, in reaction to charges about corruption concerning then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and some of his family, and the statements made by Fethullah Gülen in support of the Gezi Park demonstrations (see Sect. 4.4), the AKP government started to take increasingly restrictive and repressive actions against Hizmet organisations, especially its schools, accusing it under a derogatory and threatening name of being a Paralel Devlet Yapılanması (PDY or, Parallel State Structure). Attacks on Hizmet reached a new level intensity following the events of 15 July 2016 and following (see Sects. 4.4 and 4.5) with the, by then President, Erdoğan and the AKP government charging Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet with responsibility, naming Hizmet as Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü or FETÖ (Fethullahist Terrorist Organization), a charge which Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet strongly deny.

As a result of the campaign waged against it by the Turkish authorities and agencies, including beyond the borders of Turkey (Alliance for Shared Values 2016), Hizmet has, perhaps ironically, become even more well known internationally than previously. In many ways, the significance of Hizmet is highlighted not only by those sympathetic to it, but also by those who see it as potentially dangerous. Writing, for example, even from before July 2016, Holton and Lopez (2015) refer to Hizmet as “one of the best organized Islamic grass-roots organizations in the world” (p. 21) which is, however, now “attracting some long-overdue scrutiny” (p. 9). They refer to “claims from former members of a cult-like structure; a highly segregated role for women; and a lavishly funded travel program to Turkey for selected officials from academia, government and law enforcement” (p. 10), while in the foreword to their work, the President of the Washington DC–based Centre for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney Jnr. (in Holton and Lopez 2015), evaluatively summarised the movement as being a “mix of sophisticated influence operation and Islamist supremacism guised as Turkish nationalism” (p. 5).

While this book focuses on the development and transition of Hizmet in Europe, a range of the issues being faced by it there are also occurring in other parts of the world. In parts of the Two Thirds World, the Turkish government and state has deployed economic, diplomatic and other pressures designed to discredit and close down or take over Hizmet-related organisations. Turkey’s Eurasian geopolitical context and significance as a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), its Customs Union arrangement with the EU and its long-standing candidacy for accession to membership of the EU means that how Hizmet emerged into global presence and activity; how it is dealing with extra-territorial pressures from the Turkish government and how it is charting a course for its future in Europe and beyond—a matter of wider economic, political and general public interest.

Thus far, the majority of studies on Hizmet have focused either on its birth and development in Turkey; its expansion into the Turkic former Soviet Republics; or more globally—often concentrating on its schools and pedagogical practice. The present book covers Hizmet in Europe in a broader way than other single-authored publications up to now. It is also the first monograph to address Hizmet’s development in Europe that has been completely researched and written following July 2016. It contends that to properly understand Hizmet in Europe, one has to situate it contextually in its Turkish historical and geographical origins; its emergence within the forms taken by Turkish diaspora in the European countries within which it has sought to integrate and, finally, its ongoing interactive engagement with the inspiration coming from Gülen’s teaching and practice as worked out within an overall hermeneutical circle of engagement in which Hizmet, in ways increasingly informed by critical reflection on the impact of and lessons to be drawn from what has happened to it in Turkey, feeds back again into the contextually influenced further development of Gülen’s teaching.

1.2 A Religious Studies Approach and the “Politics of Naming”

The disciplinary approach of Religious Studies provides the main framework for this study. Within this approach is what is known as the “insider-outsider” problem in the study of religion (McCutcheon Ed. 1999) in which scholarly problems and opportunities are not seen as being exclusively associated with either “insider” or “outsider” perspectives. Indeed, in contrast to much mainstream of Sociology of Religion, where religions tend to be approached according to the kind of prior sociological theory adopted for understanding them, or of Theology, which usually entails the making and application of normative evaluative judgments, in the non-confessional study of religion known broadly as “Religious Studies” there has been a well-established tradition of phenomenological approach to the understanding of lived religion among individuals and groups (Smart 1973).

Although this overall approach has been critiqued (Flood 1999), it argues that it is important, as far possible, to avoid imposing one’s own interpretative (whether theological or sociological) framework without first having sought to understand phenomena as fully as possible according to how they present themselves. Taking such an initial approach does not mean one can or should completely avoid responsibility for making evaluative judgements (as discussed in detail later in this chapter; in Chap. 6 of this book; and in Weller 2022, Chap. 6).

However, even before getting into matters of substance, it will be evident that such an approach has significance for the “politics of naming” in relation to what this author has chosen to call “Hizmet”—which is how the movement is known by those who are engaged in it, and sometimes also by those sympathetic to it. By contrast, the Turkish government, state authorities; the now nearly exclusively state-supporting media; as well as reports produced by government-aligned bodies, refer almost exclusively to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization or FETÖ (Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü); or the Presidency of the Religious Affairs of the Turkish Republic’s (2017) variant reference to the “Gülenist Terrorist Organization”.

Perhaps the most widespread description used by “outsiders” who are neither completely hostile, nor fully aligned with it, is that of “The Gülen Movement”—thereby very much linking it to the person of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish Muslim teacher who inspired it. Indeed, one finds this usage among diverse “outsider” and “insider” monograph authors including, for example, Yavuz (2013); Ebaugh (2010); Tittensor (2014); Tee (2018) and Alam (2019). Some authors, such as El-Banna (2013), use a compound name such as “The Gülen-Inspired Hizmet”. Others have, on occasion, tried to promote a different kind of terminology, most notably Gürkan Çelik’s and Pim Valkenberg’s (Eds. 2010) promotion of the use of the phrase in Dutch of Vrijwilligersbeweging (The Volunteers’ Movement) on the basis that this is “how Gülen himself describes it” (p. 10—English translation by the author of this book).

Nevertheless, even when a conscious politics of naming is at work, the terminology used is far from absolutely consistent, due to authors’ changing understandings over time; the context for, or readership of, a particular publication; and the position taken by the marketing departments of various publishers. However, many authors directly involved in Hizmet would be wary of any over-identification with the person of Fethullah Gülen that might be taken to be implied by use of the descriptor “The Gülen Movement”. This is on the basis of a concern that such terminology may imply that Hizmet has a much more centralised and directed organisation than is, in reality, the case. However, some “insiders” are more flexible and do use this phrase (as in Çetin 2010), although within that book the text often switches to the (at least apparently) more straightforward epithet of “The Movement”, a usage that, albeit without capitalisation, is also sometimes used in this book and its companion volume. At the other end of spectrum, Reşat Petek’s (2019) hostile to Gülen and Hizmet book incorporates “The Hizmet Movement” into its title, while seeking to link this more “insider” usage with the more negative and conspiratorial tropes of “The Puppet” and “The New Tool of the Global Forces” that characterise the rest of the title.

Such issues are not unique to the specific phenomenon being discussed here, in the sense that setting Hizmet within a wider comparative theoretical framework for understanding movements in general, and religiously inspired initiatives in particular, can arguably help to illuminate also aspects of its particular developmental trajectory. One such example might be taken from that part of the Christian tradition out of which the present author comes, and which is now generally known as “Baptist” (see also Weller 2017). Like those within Hizmet, the early Baptists did not call themselves that or understand themselves as founders of a new movement within Christianity but, rather, as trying to bring about the restoration of a more authentic expression of the Christian faith in comparison with what had resulted from the adoption by the Roman Emperor Constantine of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The label that was applied to Baptists and intentionally used with the aim of inciting hostility towards them was that of “Anabaptist”—a word which, in itself, contained a theologically interpretive critique of the baptismal practice of those to whom it was applied by placing the Greek root prefix ana (meaning, again) in front of the word “Baptist.” Theologically and sociologically speaking, this was intended to evoke fear of the kind of unbridled religious and social “enthusiasm” unleashed by a group of adult baptising theocratically oriented Christians who took part in the 1534–1535 German city of Münster experiment to establish a new society on the basis of the direct application of scriptural injunctions to hold all property in common, but which ended, among other things, in enforced polygamy (Kautsky 1879).

Just like the early Baptists, Gülen and those inspired by him to do Hizmet have always wanted to insist that they are not “innovating” in the sense of trying to create some kind of idiosyncratic version of Islam, still less to create some kind of a “cult” around Fethullah Gülen as an individual. At the same time, there are aspects of the respect shown to Fethullah Gülen by numbers of those who have been inspired by him that, especially when looked at from outside a (Turkish) enculturated and more broadly traditional Muslim understanding, could lead to such interpretations (see Weller 2022, Sect. 3.2).

Because of this, among those associated with Hizmet there can be considerable discomfort with a word such as “Gülenian” which, on occasion, the author of this book has used “for convenience” (Weller 2017, p. 134). However, Fethullah Gülen’s thinking and teaching (Weller 2022) are concerned with trying to uncover, develop and apply, in ways appropriate to the contemporary context, particular aspects of the Islamic tradition that is rooted in the sources of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad which have arguably become buried relative to other aspects, for both Muslims and others. Indeed, even where commentators identify a strongly Sufi flavour in Gülen’s approach, Gülen himself has been at pains to stress that Sufism is the inner dimension of Islam itself and is therefore not to be separated from the Sharia’h. However, just as the epithet “Baptist” was one with which the “insiders” generally in time came to live, and eventually to adopt, on the basis of explaining what for them it does and does not mean, so also there are signs that, even if it is not felt by “insiders” to be ideal, a descriptor like the “Gülen Movement” is becoming an increasingly widespread shorthand way to describe a specific phenomenon within the development of a broader religious tradition.

1.3 Situating in the Author’s Previous Research and the Wider Literature

Not least because of the controversies that have developed around Hizmet, it is important to situate this study of Hizmet transparently within the author’s previous research on Hizmet and Fethullah Gülen, as well as the wider literature about Hizmet. This includes two previously co-edited books: the first edited by Weller and Yılmaz (2012a), containing two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Weller and Yılmaz 2012b, c) and two chapters by the author (Weller 2012a, b); the second co-edited by Barton et al. (2013a), containing two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Barton et al. 2013b, c) and one chapter by the author (Weller 2013). The majority of these chapters were based on papers that had first been presented in international conferences.

In addition, the author has acted as Director of Studies for a University of Derby doctoral thesis discussing the Hizmet movement in relation to social movement theory written by Muhammed Çetin (2010), to whom Weller 2022 is dedicated. In this overall field, the author has also published a co-authored booklet, Weller and Sleap (2014), as well as four single-authored book chapters (Weller 2006, 2015a, b, 2017), the latter of which specifically focused on the development of Hizmet in the UK.

The contentious nature of literature on the movement is highlighted in a number of places. These include the hostile website Turkishinvitations.Footnote 1 Its section on “Essential reading on the Gülen Movement”Footnote 2 states that “A large mass of printed matter and web material about the Gülen Movement has been published, but much of it is self-promotional propaganda. Often, sources that appear independent of the Movement are in fact not”. The website goes on to claim, “Further, even reports from outside the Movement have at times made misleading or inaccurate statements” and that, “To save the reader time in sifting through all this, a list of the most genuinely insightful publications is provided below”. However, despite this claim, the website goes on to list what are largely journalistic materials (albeit including from reputable publications, such as the German magazine Der Spiegel) and blogs, along with a number of master’s and doctoral dissertations, with the only significant published scholarly work cited being Turam’s (2007) now quite dated book.

However, the claim of Turkishinvitations does point to an issue that is frequently discussed in the scholarly literature. For example, Hakan Yavuz (2013), who wrote one of the early seminal scholarly works on Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, referred to what he called “four genres of literature or approaches” (p. 12) in literature about the movement. The first genre he called “academic” (p. 12) which he saw as being valuable but limited due to its being largely focused on educational aspects of the movement and based on case studies. The second genre he called “journalistic” (p. 13), which he saw as being based either on journalistic interviews or on secondary sources. The third genre he called “promotional and apologetic”, on the grounds that such publications were produced either by members of Hizmet or by scholars invited, with expenses paid, to attend what he called “the movement’s promotional conferences” (p. 13). The final genre he called “alarmist and militantly anti-Gülen writings” (p. 13) which, at the time of his writing, he identified as tending to be associated with hardline Kemalist approaches.

Particularly in the Turkish language, there are a considerable number of publications, albeit of a more journalistic or popularist kind that are fundamentally designed to attack and discredit Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, rather than to evaluate him, his teaching and the movement inspired by him in a sober and properly critical way. As discussed in more detail in the companion volume to this book (Weller 2022, Sect. 1.3), Doğan Koç’s (2012) book examines such literature from its earliest appearance in Turkish, in the early 2000s, up to the time of his book’s publication when such materials were also increasingly appearing in English, especially online.

Since Koç’s analysis, such works have been added to by authors aligned with and/or supporting the ruling AKP party. Although the majority of such works are published in Turkish, among recent examples that have also appeared in English are Reşat Petek’s (2019) The Puppet. The New Tool of the Global Forces: The Hizmet Movement. Petek was Chair of the Turkish Parliamentary Inquiry Committee into the events of July 2016 and, given the position taken by that Committee in reflecting the overall stance on those events taken by the President and the government, it is perhaps not surprising that in the title of his book alone, one can see a confluence of nationalist perspectives and conspiracy theories in the context of which Gülen is portrayed primarily as a political operator at the head of a hydra-headed “well established terrorist organization” (p. 159) dedicated to the overthrow of Turkey’s constitutional order. Other publications attack Hizmet on religious grounds, as with the recent publication of Presidency of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Turkey (2017) which portrays Gülen as an at least heterodox “cult leader” engaged in strategic deception of a kind that hides behind religious justification (p. 5).

There is also a wide range also of scholarly relevant literature that reflects sometimes quite radically different religious, political and academic disciplinary approaches and evaluations of both Fethullah Gülen and of Hizmet. These include hundreds of journal articles, conference proceedings papers and book chapters, as well as master’s and doctoral theses, representing a variety of disciplinary approaches. In relation to scholarly literature David Tittensor argued, in the Preface to his 2014 study of the movement, that “I found that there are seemingly only two camps, members and sympathisers in the one group, and those that are against them in the other. In short, a battle to define the Movement as either paragons of virtue or deceivers is at hand” (p. ix). If there was at least some truth in this judgement before the events of July 2016, such tendencies have subsequently become more acute even if not all scholarly works fall into one or the other category.

A range of relevant scholarly publications on Hizmet is also reflected in the Oxford University Press’s online bibliography of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen by Alparslan Açıkgenç (2011). However, since this was last updated only in 2011, its coverage is now somewhat out of date. More recently, the (recently deceased) Dutch scholar Karel Steenbrink (2015) wrote what he called a “bibliographical essay” (pp. 13–46) on “Fethullah Gülen, Hizmet and Gülenists”, while a 2016 edition (3.4) of the Hizmet Studies Review (linked with the movement-funded Gülen Chair at the Catholic University of Leuven) was devoted to a Hizmet Index, 1996–2015.

An important part of the research project that underlies this book was a systematic review of research and other literature with which this volume and its companion volume engage. Indeed, the present author is currently working together with Ismail Şezgin on an annotated bibliography projectFootnote 3 with the aim of creating a new and comprehensive annotated bibliography of publications on Hizmet and Fethullah Gülen, initially covering English and Turkish language publications, but with the future possibility of extending its coverage also to other languages.

In relation to work by some Hizmet “insiders”, Yavuz (2013) argues in a footnote that “their works while informative tend to lack a critical edge” (p. 251). This debate is arguably further complicated by contention over the role and status of “external” scholars who have presented papers at what Tittensor (2014) describes as the “deeply problematic and ultimately counterproductive” flurry of “in-house books and conferences”, and which he sees as “little more than a public relations campaign that seeks to capture the field” (p. x). Indeed, in a more recent book chapter on “Secrecy and Hierarchy in the Gülen Movement and the Question of Academic Responsibility” Tittensor goes on to develop further his concerns in this regard referring to what he describes as “a major push by the GM to effectively co-opt Western scholars into writing ‘academic lite’ articles that overlook its more problematic aspects” (pp. 217–218).

To put the Hizmet-related specificity of this issue into some wider context, around two to two and a half decades ago, similar debates took place in relation to the work of scholars of the Unificationist Movement who took part in conferences out of which came publications that were sponsored by the Unificationist movement—the various dimensions of, and issues related to, which are discussed in a paper by one of those scholars, George Chryssides (2004), who reflects honestly that “The researcher’s role involves several areas of conflict, which are difficult, if not impossible, to resolve” (np).

Clearly, as with conferences of many kinds where scholars are given an honorarium for preparing and presenting a paper, there are ethical issues to consider in relation to expectation and independence. However, while respectful of Tittensor’s work on Hizmet, and understanding the potential grounds for his concerns, this author does not ultimately share Tittensor’s scepticism about the nature of these conferences or value of the literature produced out of them. This is not only because of what could be seen as the potentially self-interested reason that the author’s two co-edited books on Hizmet originated largely from papers presented at movement-sponsored conferences, albeit the books were published by “mainstream” scholarly publishers. Rather, it is that in the current book and in its companion volume, all scholarly publications—including those published by publishers related to Hizmet and those published by commercial academic publishing houses; those written by “insiders”, as well as those written by “outsiders”; those that aspire to objectivity and those which are clearly of a strong positionality—are all seen as offering different kinds of valuable insight into Fethullah Gülen’s teaching and practice and how it is received by others, including by those in Hizmet that his person, teaching and practice have inspired.

Indeed, despite Tittensor’s (2018) strictures in relation to movement-funded conferences and publications, he concludes his own discussion of academic responsibility in relation to studies of Hizmet by saying, “I wish to stress that I am not seeking to impugn the scholarship or the place of insider research but simply counsel that it is important that scholars maintain a critical distance” (p. 232). In relation to such concerns, it is this author’s experience of participating in editorial work for Hizmet conferences that he has been freely able to review and score papers for inclusion or otherwise and that Hizmet has given “outsiders” invitations to offer critiques with a consistency and to a degree that is rare among religious groups. And for those of us who are outside Islam and/or Hizmet the fact that we do not always take the opportunities afforded to us and the invitations made to make our honest, and including properly critical, input is not the fault of Hizmet, but is rather a matter of our scholarly and/or religious/ethical responsibility.

Of course, to operate in a way in which one can engage with, and evaluate, texts at multiple levels requires a methodologically sophisticated and critical hermeneutical engagement with the texts concerned. In relation to Hizmet, such a theoretical discussion linked with worked examples can be found in Florian Volm’s (2017) German language book Die Gülen-Bewegung im Spiegel von Selbsdarstellung und FremdrezptionFootnote 4 (or, in English translation by the author, The GülenMovement in the Mirror of Self-Representation and External Reception). Taking an approach of this kind, while no scholarly literature will be excluded from consideration in this book, there will be a transparent acknowledgement of both the locus and type of the publications concerned.

Among monographs from publishing houses connected with HizmetFootnote 5 and which focus on Hizmet more generally, including Hizmet in Europe, are more general works such as Ergene (2008); Çetin (2010); El-Banna (2013); Michel (2014); and Alam (2019). Those from publishing houses not aligned with Hizmet include Ebaugh (2010); Çelik (2010); Yavuz (2013); Tittensor (2014); and Cıngıllıoğlu (2017). Finally, for published works that focus specifically on Europe, see Sect. 3.1 and, for individual countries within it, Sects. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11.

Alongside these authored and edited books are many hundreds of journal articles and book chapters representing a variety of disciplinary approaches and evaluative stances in relation to Hizmet and Fethullah Gülen. From among these, one new edited collection of book chapters should particularly be noted—both because it was published following July 2016, and because of the critical (albeit varied) perspectives it contains on the question of the involvement or otherwise of the Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet movement in those events. This is published under the title of Turkey’s July 15th Coup: What Happened and Why?, edited by Hakan Yavuz and Bayram Balcı (2018). However, while generally relevant to the question of the futures of Hizmet, that book is much more concerned with Turkey and is not specifically focused on the European context.

Smaller and more journalistic pieces can be found on Hizmet in various European countries. But, overall, the literature specifically focused on Europe as a whole remains relatively limited. In addition (with the exception of some more campaigning reports) the vast majority of the above were written and published prior to July 2016, the impact from and evolution of Hizmet following which is the main focus of the current book. Indeed, this is the first book-length scholarly publication to take a European overview of the interaction between Hizmet and its European environment following July 2016 and the subsequent persecution, imprisonment, asset-stripping and civic deprivation of individuals and organisations associated with Hizmet in Turkey. One of the by-products of this period has been a growing re-assessment, not only by external observers, but also and in many ways especially by those associated with Hizmet both about how it developed in Turkey, and also about its future trajectory and the implications of it increasingly operating outside the historical inheritance of the Turkish social, religious and political environment.

At the time of writing, the only other scholarly published sources that have specifically engaged with this in relation to Europe are the series of articles published in the 2018 special edition of the journal Politics, Religion and Ideology called “Ruin or Resilience? The Future of the Gülen Movement in Transnational Political Exile”Footnote 6 which includes overview articles by Watmough and Öztürk (2018a, b). This, as well as covering a more general discussion of exile and transition, includes articles that centre on Hizmet-related case studies including in relation to Europe, on France, the UK and Italy.

In addition to all the above there are a range of magazines through to newspaper articles which also form part of the context for the debates that rage around this movement and the figure who inspired it. In so far as these in themselves form part of what might be called relevant “social data”, they will also be engaged with where appropriate, albeit also on a basis informed by transparency concerning their locus and modes of production.

1.4 Evidence, Aims and Methods

Research and scholarship undertaken into movements and people involved in religious and political contention can be subject to many challenges, some of which are informed by real issues; while others can be more to do with perceptions, whether accurate or inaccurate; and still others (including also among scholars) can be the product of ideological or prejudicial stances of which there has been insufficient reflexive and self-critical awareness.

In the Preface to his 2014 book on Hizmet, David Tittensor (2014) explains his aim to “make a serious empirical contribution” that provides “insight into the lived realities of those that work within the movement and those that are touched by it” (p. x). By gathering primary research data through interviews with individuals publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe, this book, like Tittensor’s, aims also to provide such empirically informed insight into the lived realities of Hizmet, albeit in this instance focused geographically on Europe.

Alongside being able to draw upon two decades’ worth of informal knowledge of, and conversations and interaction with, those associated with Hizmet, this was achieved by means of conducting twenty-nine semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews that, through participants’ stories, collated evidence of underpinning cultural milieux, social contexts and personal attitudes. Initial selection of the European countries was made in order to cover locations that would be as geographically, historically and demographically varied as possible, while also having differing histories with regard to the Turkish diaspora in general and Hizmet in particular. In the end it did not prove possible to secure interviews that had originally been hoped for in Austria and Poland, but interviews did take place in relation to nine European countries, namely Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

One limitation of the fieldwork, and therefore potential criticism of the book that must be acknowledged and taken seriously, is that the vast majority of the formal interviews that inform this book took place with men. This partly reflects the reality (as discussed in Sect. 5.7 of this book) that Hizmet is still quite strongly reflective of patriarchy in terms of both its Turkish and Muslim heritages. When coupled with the choice made to give significant voice to those who have been Fethullah Gülen’s historically close associates and to interviewees in Europe who have had public roles within Hizmet-related groups (primarily on the grounds that in the post-2016 context interviewees already known to be publicly aligned with Hizmet might be less hesitant to go on the record) this inevitably had further gender-related consequences.

Acknowledging the gender imbalance limitations of the interviews, the author has tried in terms of other published sources, to pay special attention to those that concern the position and perspectives of women within the movement (for example: Curtis 2010, 2012; Hassencahl 2012; Pandaya 2012; Rausch 2012, 2014). Nevertheless, despite these mitigating factors, it remains the case that it is likely that both companion volumes will, in due course, need complementing, critiquing and quite probably correcting by primary interviews with emergent women leaders in Hizmet, and also by a conscious and systematically applied specifically feminist perspectives and approaches, some work on which has been contributed, among others, by Raja (2013) and Fougner (2017).

Despite these acknowledged limitations, it is to a large degree the “raw” nature of the contributions made by interview participants—and who, in this book, are frequently given voice in direct quotations as well in summarised form—that brings a particular focus and power to the wider discussions of the book. Of course, when it comes to a more analytical consideration of the raw interview data and the observations of the researcher, neither can straightforwardly be taken as having any especially privileged status that is not itself subject to further analysis. Therefore, as a matter of transparency, it should be stated that this research was conducted in the course of the author’s employment at Regent’s Park College, where it was funded through charitable donations made by anonymous donors for this purpose and channelled via the Dialogue Society, a UK registered charity (No. 1117039) which, on its website, acknowledges its inspiration from Fethullah Gülen.Footnote 7 The Dialogue Society therefore has had a material interest in this book and research that lies behind it. That interest was also represented in the project’s reference group, of which some representatives of the Dialogue Society were a part, along with senior scholars from the College.

However, in relation to research on religion (as in other fields) in a university context it is quite possible for it to have an ultimate funding source that may or may not have expectations for, and/or be welcoming or not of the work that is actually produced, while having confidence in the academic integrity and rigour of the publication and its underlying research. In contrast with consultancy, in which the contractual relationship is directly between the commissioner of the research and the person, persons or company that conducts it, higher education institutions have systems in place that control for potential challenges to the integrity of research results, and the funders of research who work through higher education institutions accept such controls.

In this instance, the funding agreement with the College for the research included a clear statement relating to the College’s academic independence and the author’s academic freedom, thus safeguarding the independence, integrity and results of the project. In addition, the project went through a rigorous research ethics scrutiny and approval process at the University of Oxford, as one of the world’s leading research universities, and which took account of the University’s Conflict of Interest policy. Within these processes the funding source and arrangements governing the research were made transparent and within which the approaches to be taken to the research were set out and discussed in a detailed way, resulting in the formal ethical approval that undergirded the rigour and integrity of the research.Footnote 8

However, it remains the case that those who conduct research and write for publication are necessarily affected by their disciplinary, religious and civil society backgrounds and commitments. Transparency in relation to such is particularly important when research deals with individuals and groups that have been the focus of controversy. In this case, it should therefore be made clear that the author works broadly in the study of religion rather than that of political science, the latter of which, along with sociology, are the disciplines from within which many scholars have hitherto approached these matters. When dealing with phenomena which, at the least, present themselves to others in terms of a religious inspiration, the epistemological presuppositions and social understandings that the researchers inevitably bring to their disciplines and the subject matter of their research entail both potential benefits and limitations. One of the lessons that has been pressed home by, among others, advocates of feminist and decolonising epistemologies and methodologies is that, however rigorously scholars seek to operate within their disciplinary norms, neither they nor their disciplinary traditions are neutral—even, and perhaps are especially not so, when they purport to be.

Thus, in terms of personal positionality it should be acknowledged that the author is a religious believer and practitioner, albeit within (the Baptist tradition of) Christianity rather than within Islam. Thus, for all that it is the case that the research lying behind this book and its companion volume draws on social scientific methodologies and literatures, informed by over two decades of personal knowledge of, and interaction with, Hizmet and an extensive engagement with the literature about Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, it is ultimately the author’s professional judgement that, in order to understand Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet in as fully an adequate a way as possible, one needs to recognise and acknowledge the primarily religious register in which they at least understand themselves to be operating.

According to the African historian Achille Mbembe (2016), it is both possible and important to work within a “a process of knowledge production that is open to epistemic diversity” (p. 37). At the same time, in advocating this, Mbembe is quick to anticipate the critique that such an approach might lead to an epistemological, cultural and ethical relativism by arguing that such an approach “does not necessarily abandon the notion of universal knowledge for humanity”, but rather that pluriversity itself embraces the possibility of a universal knowledge for humanity “via a horizontal strategy of openness todialogueamong different epistemic traditions” (italics in the original).

In terms of the relationship between one’s position and approach as a scholar and one’s engagements and responsibilities as a citizen, the author should also acknowledge his both being and having for a number of years been a member of the Board of Advisors of the Dialogue Society. A readiness to act in such a capacity is, of course, distinct from being in membership or having similar categories of direct personal alignment. Nevertheless, readiness to act in this capacity signals the fact that, evaluatively speaking, overall the author takes a critically sympathetic approach to the practice of Hizmet and the teaching of Fethullah Gülen. It also means that, in addition to any ways in which one’s academic work may impact upon and influence the development of Hizmet, in the context of his role in the Society’s Board of Advisors the present author has, on occasion, either individually and/or as part of the wider Board, made recommendations to it on matters that are discussed later in this book, including that of transparency around the inspiration for the Dialogue Society’s work as having been drawn from the person and teaching Fethullah Gülen (see Sect. 5.4), and encouragement to the Society to engage with other organisations of Muslim inspiration (see Sect. 5.6).

Such a role also enables the possibility of having an awareness of, and perhaps more access to, some important and sometimes sensitive internal discussions and debates. At the same time, ethically, it is important to differentiate such informal knowledge from data that is collected when one is acting formally as a researcher which is only used here within the principles and practice of informed consent.

Finally, in the light of a note on the Turkishinvitations website that “there is no such thing as a free Turkey trip”,Footnote 9 the author should also acknowledge, in 2008, taking part in a study visit to Turkey and Hizmet institutions there at the invitation of the UK’s Dialogue Society. Nevertheless, as with the author’s previously noted experience concerning Hizmet-sponsored conferences, participation in such a trip certainly did not preclude the asking of sharp and robust questions. Details of some of those that were posed by the author in an 18 July 2008 paper, circulated to participants as part of the preparations for the trip, are set out in detail in the companion volume to this one (Weller 2022, Sect. 6.1), to which the reader wanting more detailed evidence is referred.

As Tittensor (2014) acknowledged when arguing for the importance of trying to make an empirically based contribution, his approach was also “not value-neutral” (p. x). In all of this, therefore, awareness of oneself and transparency before others are the main means by which there can be control for potentially problematic bias. This is, in turn, a part of what the widely acknowledged parent of the discipline of Religious Studies, Ninian Smart (1973), used to call the importance of “axioanalysis” in the study of religion, and particularly in relation to any attempt at a cross-cultural approach to religion, where one “should stimulate some degree of self-awareness. It is as though we should undergo axioanalysis—a kind of evaluational equivalent to psychoanalysis: what has been called more broadly ‘values clarification’. Or perhaps we might call it ‘own-worldview analysis’ ” (Smart 1973, p. 265). Especially in such hotly debated areas as those that are under discussion in this book, both the contributors to the research and researchers themselves are inevitably actors in a social process.

In relation to this, one of the anonymous interviewees, HE1 (see Acknowledgements), who is publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe, said, “For me it was really a good reflection” and of which the person concerned commented that they and others previously “didn’t have time for.” Finally, because of the extensive number of imprisonments without trial, deprivation of employment and assets, and actions pursuing guilt by mere association with Fethullah Gülen and/or Hizmet which followed July 2016, in contrast with Tittensor’s (2018) counsel, “it is important that scholars maintain ‘a critical distance’ ” (p. 232) as between “two polar-opposite narratives” of what “actually transpired” (p. 218), there is at least a case to be argued that such a context calls rather for scholars to be ready to take the risk of adopting a clear overall position in terms of (consciously, rather than in any case it already being so, even without explicit consciousness) becoming a social actor in relation to the human issues at stake.

Adopting such a conscious position as a scholarly social actor entails a willingness to accept the responsibility that in doing so, one’s evaluations and associated choices might be wrong. Therefore, in moving beyond critical distance alone, and incorporating positionality in a way that is academically and ethically responsible, this can only be undertaken on the basis of being as informed as possible through the aspiring to gain as much empirical insight as possible into lived realities of what is being researched alongside being as self-aware as possible of one’s own value and epistemologicalpositionalities through the application to oneself and one’s academic approach of a rigorous axioanalysis.