1 Hizmet: The Emergence of a Phenomenon

Movements and groups, both civil and religious, do not exist in either a contemporary or an historical vacuum. What is today known to those who are engaged in it as Hizmet (the Turkish word meaning “service”) emerges out of the conjunction of a particular set of geographical, historical, cultural, political and religious factors and their interplay which have all had a part in Hizmet’s emergence onto the European (and world) stage.

In terms of geography, history, culture, politics and religion, what is seen as belonging to Europe and why, and by whom, is a matter of ongoing debate. The landmass that is currently recognised in international law as the Republic of Turkey was historically only a part of the multi-national Ottoman Empire. This geographical area was, and often still is, seen by many in these debates (see Aydın-Düzgit 2012) around Turkey’s potential membership of the EU—and especially among those in the EU who are opposed to this—as belonging culturally to “the East” rather than “the West”. A part of this debate relates especially to the perception of Turkey, despite its state secularism, being seen as belonging culturally to what is, by many, called “the Muslim world”.

All of these matters are the subject of contestation, with some seeing Turkey’s relationship with, and orientation towards, Europe as having been decisively addressed in Atatürk’s revolution and the dominant politicalKemalism that followed it (including its very specific form of secularism). Within Turkey itself, some have dreamed of potentially restoring the historical role of the Caliphate in global Islam and some have denounced the EU as being basically a “Christian Club”. Others, including Gülen himself in his capacity as Honorary President of the Journalists and Writers Foundation, in a message sent to the Abant Platform meeting in the European Parliament in Brussels on 3–4 December 2004, have argued that “A Turkey in the EU will more successfully realize its function to establish a bridge between the Islamic world and the West” (Gülen 2004). And all of these debates, in turn, both shape and are shaped by debates more specifically on the nature of the Hizmet movement in its past, present and potential future(s).

Hizmet has been described in a variety of ways by a range of external scholars, commentators and critics, as well as by internal participants. Some, using classical Turkish terminology that was historically utilised in relation to Sufi expressions of Islam, have both described and sought to understand Hizmet in terms of it being a cemaat (meaning “community”). Others have argued that such a description does not do justice to the distinctive features of Hizmet. Still others, and especially those seeking to locate Hizmet more in terms of civil society than in relation to the more religious and Islamic, have couched it in terms of “movement” terminology, including debate about the extent to which Hizmet can either be described and/or at least in part analysed and explained as a so-called New Religious Movement and/or by reference to social movement theory (Çetin 2010).

It is the argument of this book that one can, in many ways, best characterise Hizmet as a network of congregants, recordings, books, sobhets (or, meetings) that has developed in interactive engagement with the emergence of Fethullah Gülen as a figure who has religiously inspired, intellectually articulated and practically initiated a distinctive action- and reflection-oriented hermeneutic of Anatolian and Sufi-inflected Sunni Islam into a dynamic and organic set of networked initiatives including dormitories (often known as “lighthouses”), schools, businesses, media enterprises, business and other initiatives that have a relationship with one another in terms of mutual engagement, learning and challenge.

In contrast to the approach by many political scientists and sociologists, while an understanding of Hizmet can certainly be enhanced by locating it within its social and political contexts, this book argues that an appreciation of the fundamentally religious nature of the origins of Hizmet is of central importance to understanding it. And this religious character has been attested to by those who have from early times been close associates of Fethullah Gülen, such as interviewee Mustafa Öztürk (see Acknowledgements) who, when interviewed, testified concerning Fethullah Gülen that:

Since he came to Izmir in 1966 – except one period, which is the March 12 1970 military Memorandum and interference – during that time in the 70s, except for seven months he never ever gave up teaching and running the circle with the students of reading the authentic texts of Islam on theology, hadith, sunnah, jurisprudence, whether they are young students or not according to their understanding.

The richness and innovation of this period as described by Öztürk is described and discussed in Weller 2022 Sect. 2.4. It provided structural opportunities for the realisation of a key part of Fethullah Gülen’s vision which concerned the creation and the moving into all parts of society of what he called a “Golden Generation” (Sunier 2014) of young, pious Muslims who were at the same time equipped to engage with the natural sciences and with social modernity. In this one can see the influence of the vision of Said Nursi, the Kurdish Islamic scholar (Mardin 1989; Turner and Hurkuç 2009) since, from the beginning, Hizmet has been characterised by its aim to tackle the three evils of ignorance, conflict and poverty which were initially identified by Nursi.

2 Turkey’s Need for More Schools, Not More Mosques

The earliest forms of Hizmet that connected with the wider Turkish society were the schools that were sponsored initially by businesspeople inspired by Fethullah Gülen’s articulation of Islam and his radically formulated argument that Turkey had a greater need for the foundation of schools than it did for the building of further mosques. Thus, these schools addressed the first of the three evils identified by Nursi that were taken up as a focus by Gülen and Hizmet, namely, that of ignorance. In time, as graduating students began to move through these schools from primary to secondary levels, an organic need developed for informal, supplementary education support that would better prepare existing students and others wishing to gain entry to higher-level schools and, ultimately, for entry to Turkish higher universities in general, eventually including also to the higher education institutions founded by Hizmet.

According to the Presidency of the Turkish Intelligence Department’s, a source not sympathetic to Hizmet 1998 Bulletin 70, under the title of The Radical Right and Reactionary (Fundamentalist) Activities, the following schools (lise, lyceum) and colleges (kolej, college) were among those that were run by Hizmet. These included: İzmir Yamanlar Fen Lisesi, İstanbul Fatih Koleji, İstanbul Safiye Sultan Kız Lisesi, Mersin Yıldırımhan Lisesi, Ankara Samanyolu Lisesi, Van Serhat Lisesi, Denizli Server Lisesi, Erzurum Aziziye Lisesi, Erzincan Otlukbeli Lisesi, Eskişehir Ertuğrul Gazi Lisesi, Sakarya Işık Lisesi, Manisa Şehzade Mehmet Türk Lisesi, Aydın Nizami Erkek Lisesi, and Fatih Üniversitesi (founded November 1996).Footnote 1 While in this source the list was deployed as part of an argument against what it identified as a growing cause for concern about the widespread nature of Hizmet’s influence, there is no doubt that this commitment to developing educational institutions was foundational and central in the development of Hizmet, again Öztürk explained this by situating it in the wider social and political context out of which Fethullah Gülen developed his commitment to educational opportunity (which wider context is also explained in more detail in Weller 2022, Sect. 2.6):

If you just look at the 1960s and the ‘70s at that time it was always the same story, coup d’etats, coalitions, failing coalitions, street fights and skirmishes, and interference of the state apparatus in all government issues and the people, but no matter what happened, Hojaefendi didn’t give up his idea of education.

3 Turkey’s Deep Fissures, Need for Dialogue and Hizmet Responses

The deep social andpolitical fissures highlighted by Öztürk as having been part of the context for Fethullah Gülen’s commitment to educational development were also very much part of the context for Hizmet’s addressing the second of the evils identified by Nursi: namely that of disunity and conflict and the need for dialogue as a means of overcoming that. Thus, Hizmet initiatives became concerned with facilitating dialogue in the context of an otherwise ideologically deeply divided Turkish society. In this context, the Gazeteciler ve Yazarlar Vakfi (GYV) or, as it is more internationally known in English, The Journalists and Writers Foundation (JWF), founded in 1994 with Fethullah Gülen as its Honorary President, played a very important role. In 2012, the JWF became the first Turkish institution to be accorded General Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) which gives NGOs various privileges of access and engagement within the United Nations system, including the right to be represented at designated meetings, and the right to have their documents translated and circulated as official UN documents.

Its Board of Directors made annual Tolerance and Dialogue Awards to public personalities, and the JWF organised a number of regular events, including the International Family Conferences (2010–2016); the Women’s Perception Workshop in Media (2011–2016); Cohabitation Awards (2011–2016) and the Antalya Forum (2012–2016) which was held bi-annually by the Dialogue Eurasia Platform (see further below). According to the Forum’s preserved historic website,Footnote 2 among the topics addressed were Lack of Dialogue and Prejudices; Youth within the Process of Change in Eurasia; Globalization; The Future of Local Cultures in the Process of Globalization; Tolerance and Dialogue in Education; The Role of Media in the Process of Establishing Dialogue in Eurasia; Tolerance and Discrimination in Peace Education; A Meeting of Eurasian Intellectuals; Family as a Value and Rethinking the Global Economic Order.

The JWF largely carried out its work through a number of specifically focused “Platforms”. These included the Abant Platformu (or, Abant Platform). Named after a freshwater lake in northwest Anatolia’s Bolu Province, it created openings for contact and dialogue between individuals and groups who otherwise had very little, if any, social or intellectual contact (Uğur 2013). Its aim, as stated on its historic website, was:

To bring together academicians, journalists, civil society representatives and decision-makers from different parts of society to create grounds where polyphony will be resolved. Religious – state relations, education, clash of civilizations, human rights, Alevi and Kurdish issues, and the Middle East were discussed in the Abant meetings.Footnote 3

Many of the early Abant Platform meetings sought to engage especially with the pivotal question for the Turkish Republic of how far, in a society operating within the social and political legacy of the founder of the Republic, Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, but also with a long and rich Muslim civilisational heritage, it might or might not be possible to develop a consensus around the social and political meaning of the “secular” in a way that could be inclusive for all citizens of the Republic (both religious and non-religious). In a context within which social, political and ideological cleavages had developed of a kind that made it difficult for people to communicate in terms of even some basis for a shared understanding of each other’s life worlds, the Platform played an extremely important role in building the possibility of social cohesion between people holding at least apparently radically different perspectives, and in laying foundations for a more creative shared future. As interviewee Özcan Keleş (see Acknowledgements) from the UK put it, commenting on the Abant Platform events:

The best way to judge that is to look at the comments of people who were part of them but were not Hizmet-related: whether they were left or right, they were expressing their shock at being able to share the same room with some of their ideological rivals and arch-enemies. So, it was quite extraordinary and the first few topics were very significant – Islam and secularism; Islam and democracy; and Islam and human rights. And you had a very wide-ranging group of people coming there.

While focused primarily on Turkey, from 2004 onwards the Platform’s work expanded internationally, with meetings also being held in Washington, Brussels, Cairo, Erbil and Addis-Ababa. Towards the end of its work in Turkey, the JWF also held meetings under the theme of “Different Perspectives on Turkey” and, following the events of Gezi Park in which protestors clashed with police (for more details see Sect. 4.4), Abant Taksim meetings were also regularly held in Istanbul.

Other platforms of the JWF included the Diyalog Avrasya (or, Dialogue Eurasia Platform, in brief DA Platform) which was founded in 1998 and was taken forward by the platform’s broadcaster, The Dialogue, as well as by the magazine DA (meaning ‘yes’ in Russian), a Turkish and Russian magazine providing also publications in Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Ukrainian and distributed widely in Eurasia, as well as regional special editions that aspired to be a point of reference for the region in relation to art, history, archaeology, literature, life, global thought, politics, religion and ideas.

The Kültürlerarası Diyalog Platformu (KADİP), or Intercultural Dialogue Platform, was another platform of the JWF. According to its historic website: “The Intercultural Dialogue Platform (GAD) carries out projects that encourage communities of different religions and denominations to create deeper, richer and stronger ties between different cultures or different segments of society” and that “The platform seeks to contribute theoretically and practically to the culture of living with its activities in social, cultural and religious fields by combining communities that are not in dialogue, or who avoid being side-by-side with common themes”.Footnote 4 For example, in 2015 it held an international panel on “The Compassion of The Holy Prophet (PBUH)” and another on “The Compassion of Hazrat Mary in the Holy Qur’an and in the Book of Holy Book”.

The Kadın Platformu (or, Women’s Platform) was founded in 2010 not only to engage with issues specific to women (although it included this), but also to bring a female perspective to bear onto wider shared issues with the aim of producing new solutions. The Medialog Platform’s historic preserved web page explained about Medialog that it “carries out programs aimed at creating a consensus in the media and spreading principled and accurate journalism within the framework of press freedom, a multi-voice in the press, media ethics, democracy and human rights” and that “The platform aims to contribute to the development and solidification of human rights such as freedom of thought and expression, the right to information, information and free criticism”.Footnote 5 For example, in 2014, in Istanbul, it held a “Turkey-Jordan Media Workshop” and also a “Turkey-Japan Media Workshop”, as well as in Moscow, a “Turkey-Russia Media Workshop”.

Returning to the Abant Platform, its thirty-fourth and final meeting was held in Bolu between 31 January and 2 February 2016 under the title “The Problem of Democracy in Turkey”. Its sessions focused on a range issues noted in the meeting’s Summary and Evaluation Text.Footnote 6 This concluded that “Our democracy is experiencing one of the deepest crises in its history. This crisis consumes human, moral and conscientious values quickly, laying the groundwork for lawlessness and the settlement of one-man rule”. The summary also included what eventually turned out to be the somewhat prophetic warning that “We are going through a period where everyone who is seen as opposed to political power is targeted and lynched through the media. These lynchings show that the concept of ‘internal enemy’, which we have been critical of for decades in our democratization processes, has returned to our lives”.

Indeed, immediately following the events of July 2016, the JWF and all its previously associated Platforms were targeted for closure by the Turkish authorities under Decree No. 667 of the National Security Council, dated 23 July 2016. The JWF does, however, continue in renewed international form, now based in New York. Its current website says that it is “an international civil society organization dedicated to culture of peace, human rights and sustainable development”Footnote 7 with its main “Working Areas” identified as: Culture of Peace, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development; and its “Projects” identified as She4All; Commission on The Status of Women; Young Peace Ambassadors Academy; Women’s Development Summit and UNGA Conference and Reception.

4 Relief of Poverty

Completing the Nursi-inspired triad of education, dialogue and a focus also on the relief of poverty was the Hizmet-inspired initiative, Kimse Yok Mu (in English, Is Anybody There?). As Gülen’s close associate, Reşit Haylamaz (see Acknowledgements) explained it:

This appeared for the first time when we had this huge earthquake on 17 August 1999, when our TV network, STV called on people to help. Thousands of people were killed. Some gave money, some people gave clothing, some people furniture, so they had to organise this under the roof of a relief organization and there came Kimse Yok Mu.

Trust in Kimse Yok Mu was big factor because many people did not have such trust in the Red Crescent organisation, which was widely believed to be corrupt. Therefore, as Haylamaz summarised it:

Based on that trust, people started opening new branches all over the country and it actually became the biggest relief organization because of the trust our nation had in it. So you can these services actually are emerging out of need. Yes, we cannot ignore the fact that Hojaefendi was certainly involved as the main trigger and the main source of inspiration, and people certainly took courage from his message. But things emerge in the field out there where people decide where we need to invest, or where we need to divert our services to.

By 2002 Kimse Yok Mu had become as an international not-for-profit Humanitarian Aid and Development Organization. According to a promotional video on its historic Facebook site, and entitled, +40 Things You Didn’t Know About Kimse Yok Mu,Footnote 8 by 2015 it had 40 branches in Turkey, with 130,000 registered volunteers, and was working in 113 countries around the world. It had a special disasters team called Asya, which had worked in over 114 disaster zones, using training experts in search and rescue, medical counselling and trauma. Overall, its work included the creation of clean water wells, orphans and orphanages, cataract operations, hospital projects, vocational training for women and schools.

On 4 October 2014, as part of the ongoing tension between the AKP government and Hizmet in this period the Turkish government revoked its licence to collect fundsFootnote 9 and, as with other Hizmet-related initiatives, in the wake of July 2016, it was closed. On 13 February 2018 it was reportedFootnote 10 that, on 9 February 2018, arrest warrants had been issued by the Anatolia Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office for twenty-one foundation officials linked with Kimse Yok Mu, and of which thirteen had been detained. Since 2010, Kimse Yok Mu, like JWF, had held Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC in the United Nations. Like JWF it has managed to continue in a new form and is now known as KYM InternationalFootnote 11 and functions as a non-governmental international humanitarian relief and development organisation.

5 Business Links

Given the early role of individual businesspeople in the overall development of Hizmet, it is perhaps not surprising that, in due course, out of the until then seven informal business networks, in 2005, a national business network was established. This was known as TUSKON—the abbreviated Turkish title of Türkiye İşadamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu (or, in English, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists). By 2014, it included 7 regional federations which, between them, listed 186 affiliated organisations, of which 90 per cent were small or medium establishments with fewer than 50 employees. Many of the businesspeople involved in TUSKON were linked with Hizmet, and from 2012 it, too, had Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, although as with JWF, and Kimse Yok Mu, following representations from the Turkish government, on 19 April 2017 the Council cancelled its membership.Footnote 12

TUSKON engaged in lobbying with decision-makers at the local, regional, national and global levels. As one can see from pictures of its meetings at the time, and reflective of the structures of Turkish society, TUSKON and its affiliates were predominantly composed of male businesspeople. However, out of 186 primary-level member organisations within TUSKON, five of these were specifically businesswomen’s organisations, including: the Gaziantep Silk Business Women’s Association; the Kahramanmaras Businesswomen’s Association; the Pearl Business Women’s Association; the Istanbul Business World and Women’s Association; and the Koza Business and Women’s Association. TUSKON was already under considerable pressure from the authorities prior to July 2016 with the police, on 6 November 2015, already having raided TUSKON buildings in Ankara, reportedly on the orders of the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office which was reported to be “investigating crimes against constitutional order”.Footnote 13 Following July 2016, TUSKON was closed.

Another important example of Hizmet-related initiatives that extended into the business sector was Bank Asya. The bank was established under the original name of Asya Finans Kurumu Anonim Şirketi (Asya Finance Incorporated Company) on 24 October 1996, with its head office in Istanbul. On 20 December 2005, its name was changed to Asya Katilim Bankasi Anonim Şirketi (Asya Participation Bank Inc.). It grew rapidly, and the present author visited its headquarters during a visit to Istanbul in 2008. Recognised for its innovation, AsyaPratik DIT, which was the first pre-paid bank card of Turkey, came into use in 2009. In 2011, Bank Asya received World Finance’s award for Best Commercial Bank in Turkey.Footnote 14

However, with the tensions that opened up between the government and Hizmet in the years following 2013, the bank lost a large number of contracts with government agencies. By April 2014, Bank Asya was reported to be facing serious government interference, in particular in relation to its issue of bond debt. In the second quarter of 2014, its net income fell dramatically by 81 per cent. On 25 August 2014, the international credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the bank’s status citing “sharp deterioration trends in financial fundamentals”.

In early 2015, its top executives were dismissed and replaced with Turkish government nominees and the bank was reportedFootnote 15 to have been taken over by the Turkish state-run Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, responsible directly to the Prime Minister. Finally, on 22 July 2016 the Turkish Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) cancelled its banking permissions. A year and a half later, action was still being taken against those who had been closely involved with the bank. As reported in the Turkish newspaper, the Hurriyet Daily News,Footnote 16 forty-nine of the sixty-eight shareholders in Bank Asya were detained across nine cities in Turkey in an operation carried out from Istanbul. According to interviewees for the research behind this book and its companion volume, simply having an account with the bank became grounds for suspicion of links with what the Turkish authorities were by now identifying as FETO.

6 The Media

The media was another area of interface with the wider society into which Hizmet in Turkey extended in relation to what Turam (2007) called Hizmet’s “window sites” to the wider world, in comparison with its more internal “private sites”. In terms of print media, the newspaper Zaman (meaning, time or era) was of particular importance. It was founded in 1986 and, in 1995, was the first Turkish daily newspaper to go online. The paper was printed in eleven countries and distributed in thirty-five, while regional editions were printed and distributed in Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany, Romania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Turkmenistan and the USA. It originally also had an English language edition, the role of which, from 2007, was taken over by the English language daily newspaper Today’sZaman. In 2008 the present author visited its headquarters during a trip to Istanbul. Zaman was both very well produced and very popular, becoming the highest-circulation newspaper in Turkey, passing its one million subscribers target in 2011. Although sometimes the accusation was made that its circulation numbers were inflated due to the distribution of free copies, BPA AuditsFootnote 17 supported its claims and showed that, in Europe, it had one of the largest subscriber bases.

On 4 March 2016, the newspaper was taken over by Turkish authorities,Footnote 18 and Abdülhamit Bilici, who had been editor-in-chief since October 2015, was deposed. The front page of Zaman’s last edition quoted Article 30 of the Turkish Constitution to the effect that “Printing house, its annexes and press equipment duly established as a press enterprise under law shall not be seized, confiscated, or barred from operation on the grounds of being the instrument of a crime”. For two days after the takeover, the Zaman website was inaccessible, with a message posted stating that the site was being updated. Archived news and content then became generally inaccessible, although it is now possible to access some historic pages using the Way Back Machine internet archive.Footnote 19 Government-controlled editions of the paper then followed, in the first edition of which there was no mention of the events relating to newspaper’s seizure, while its front page carried a series of pro-government articles and a picture of a smiling President Erdoğan.Footnote 20 On 27 July 2016, Zaman was closed by the Turkish government under decree No. 668 as published in the Official Gazette.

In relation to the broadcast media, Hizmet’s presence included the Samanyolu TV which was founded in 1999 as an international Turkish language TV station, with its headquarters in Istanbul. Samanyolu TV’s first satellite broadcasts were directed towards Central Asia, but by 1999, it was also broadcasting into the USA, with Turksat as its new mainstream satellite operator. During 2005–2013, Samanyolu TV went into online streaming with the creation of two official websites—one targeted to North American audiences, and the other to Turkish audiences, along with the creation of a range of related social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in 2005–2013. The other Hizmet-related TV station, Mehtap TV, began broadcasting on 19 June 2006 via the Turksat 2-A satellite. On 19 July 2016, both Samanyolu TV and Methtap TV’s licences were revoked and the channels were closed by the Radio and Television Supreme Council on the basis of their links with Hizmet.

7 Spread to “Turkic” Republics of the Former USSR and to the Western Balkans

In the early 1990s, after many of the educational initiatives of Hizmet had become well-established in Turkey itself, wider global events combined to bring about a new opening for Hizmet self-consciously to move beyond Turkey. This was, in the first instance, especially via its educational initiatives in the post-Soviet Turkic republics that emerged out of the collapse of the former Soviet Union (see also Weller 2022, Sect. 2.7).

As explained by close associate of Gülen, Mustafa Özcan, emphasising the contextual situation: “Communism collapsed at that time. This was nothing to do with us but this provided new opportunities, the collapse of the Iron Wall and especially the disintegration of the Soviet Union, provided new opportunities for the community”. In relation to this Özcan explained that:

At that time, neither the Turkish state nor the Turkish intellectuals had … any projects to go to those countries or to contribute to those countries. To convince the Turkish people, then, Hojaefendi said these are our fathers, these are our relatives, these are our kin folks, and these are also (to convince people) saying that they are having the same faith with us. So they have had the suppression and oppression of Communism and they have very limited resources. So now we have to go and help them so that they can stand on their own foot and that they would not be again prone to any imperialistic or exploitative system. From 1989 to 1992, in all his lectures, sometimes he was really having the true pain of it, and this is shown in his tears. He convinced people to go there, to establish or to help support such projects and initiatives.

As time went on, these post-Soviet Turkic beginnings led to Hizmet volunteers becoming increasingly globally widespread. Emphasising the fundamentally religious motivations of many of those who migrated out of Turkey, even when combined with what were also new business opportunities, the businessman and close associate of Fethullah Gülen, and interviewee, Mustafa Fidan (see Acknowledgements) explained that:

The Qur’anic message is not only for us, it’s a universal message and belongs to everyone. It’s a part of the entire humanity, and we may be a means for that message to go across and, for instance, the idea of leaving one’s home, it is a Qur’anic prescription. You do move away from your home to migrate as the Prophet did, not just for the sake of growing your business as thousands or perhaps millions of Turks did in the 1960s when they went to western Europe and first and foremost Germany.

Interpreting this migration in terms of the Islamically classical paradigm of hijrah, Fidan went on to say:

I was thinking to myself, this idea of hijrah, emigrating away from your home, this is an Islamically virtuous thing to do, because this message you have to carry to other people because those virtues belong to everyone. So if anyone, can they do it really just for the sake of God, so that they can have the pleasure of God, because they don’t go only to earn their money, but also go to be there because this is the will of God. And this is why I moved to the US, for these motivations in my heart.

In practical terms these developments happened through Hizmet groups in Turkish cities beginning to sponsor educational initiatives in various “adopted” countries. Citing the participation of the schools in the International Science Olympiads, Özcan said of the sponsoring cities that “they started to compete with their success now” instead of only in relation to the number of schools supported. These schools became popular because, among other things, they taught in English alongside the local language(s), therefore opening up international opportunities to their students. During this period, as noted by Özcan “for a couple of years up to 1995 in these Central Asian countries and a couple of Balkan countries, the number of schools went up to 100” and then it snowballed as it “became such a model for cities, for Turkish people and countries, and Turkish origin people already living in those countries or businessmen, up to 2000, including then schools in Africa and Australia, the number of schools came up to 350 outside Turkey”.

Until a certain critical mass was reached, Özcan noted that at that time in Turkey “there was such a competition that the cities and the businessmen were competing almost, you know, how many schools do you have, the neighbouring cities? And even the towns started having one school in those parts of the world, and it becomes a matter of competition”. Also, according to the previously noted Presidency of the Turkish Intelligence Department’s Bulletin No. 70, in relation to the countries of the former Soviet Union, seventeen institutions were mentioned in Uzbekistan; one university and thirteen secondary schools in Turkmenistan; together with thirty lyceums and one university in Kazakhstan.

More generally speaking, beyond the schools, Gülen’s close associate and interviewee Şerif Ali Tekalan (see Acknowledgements) said of Gülen that “Meanwhile, he visited western countries, European countries, Australia and the UK. He regularly updated himself on some details such as methods of explaining some topics, methods of discourse and so on”. As time went on, Öztürk said that “Hojaefendi himself is not going but he also asks his students to also go to Europe to start a life in western Europe too”.