Hizmet in European Hijrah

Abstract

This chapter forms the descriptive core and foundation for how the book subsequently moves into a more critical and evaluative discussion of a range of key issues within Hizmet’s transitions in Europe from its first appearance until the traumatic impact of the events of July 2016 in Turkey. Together with a European overview, the chapter especially traces Hizmet’s development within each of the countries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, before briefly touching on its presence and activity in a number of other Scandinavian, Eastern and Central European countries. In doing so, it especially draws upon primary research material derived from interviews with a range of key individuals in Hizmet who have been publicly associated with it in the countries concerned, while also setting these sources within the descriptive and analytical contributions of other relevant literature.

1 Hizmet at European Level and Across Europe

Prior to this book there has been no single-authored book-length treatment of the development of Hizmet across Europe, although Çelik, Leman and Steenbrink, eds. (2015), and Weller and Yılmaz, eds. (2012), are edited English language collections of chapters that focus on Hizmet in Europe. The former has chapters on Hizmet in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and the UK, while the latter has chapters on the historical development of Hizmet in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, together with some brief consideration of Romania, Bosnia, Kosovo and at more length, albeit focusing on educational institutions alone, Albania.

Yükleyen and Tunagür (2013) have a book chapter that discusses Hizmet in Western Europe in comparison with Hizmet in the USA, while Sunier and Landman (2015) have authored a book that examines Hizmet within an overall discussion of other transnational Muslim movements of Turkish Muslim origin active in Europe. These include larger organisations and networks such as the Diyanet; the Süleymanlıs; the Millî Görüş and the Alevis, but also the smaller organisational umbrellas at European level of the AÜTDK (Avrupa Ülkücü Türk Derneklari Konfederasyonu, or Confederation of Idealist Turkish Associations—known, in short, as the European Turkish Confederation); the Milliyetçi Haraket Partisi (MHP, or National Movement Party); the Avrupa Türk Birliği (ATÍB, Turkish Islamic Movement in Europe) and the Kaplan movement now expressed in the Islâmî Cemiyet Cemaatlar Birliği or ICCB, Union of Islamic Associations and Communities.

With regard to Hizmet’s network in western Europe, Yükleyen and Tunagür (2013) gave an estimate of around 40,000 “participants and sympathisers” (p. 224). This, they explained, was based on numbers of Zaman subscribers in Europe at the time of writing. (p. 230). They also estimated a total of 300 educational and interfaith dialogue initiatives in Germany and the Netherlands alone (p. 225). According to Sunier and Landman (2015), although taking the overall position that “There is little information about the size of the movement in Europe” (p. 90), they expressed the judgement that “Hizmet is probably the most successful in establishing a genuine network of activities across borders” (p. 88).

Prior to, during and after the Hizmet’s intentional activities in founding schools in the Turkic former Soviet Republics and the Western Balkans, Hizmet had been present in Western Europe. In the first instance this was connected with the post–Second World War Turkish labour migration to help rebuild the devastated Europe, as a consequence of which the profile of those first migrants was generally similar in the different countries, largely reflecting those who were less well educated and looking for work in manual labour (Abadan-Unat 2011).

As Tekalan explained it, “In the early 1960s, Turkish people had gone to work especially in European countries. And unfortunately, the first generation didn’t get to high school, college. After completing their primary schooleducation, they started working as their fathers”. In this context, Gülen started challenging young teachers to go to France, Germany and other European countries. Primary, secondary and middle school children were initially reached through small cultural centres in these countries and the importance of going to high school and college was impressed upon them. In the course of what he described as visiting “almost every European country”, Tekalan said, “I’ve observed the congestion in the education system of young people. They were having big problems, unemployment, domestic problems, some of them. But after these young people came to our cultural centres and contacted our friends, their interest in education increased”. As Tekalan put it:

The courses given in these cultural centres such as mathematics, physics and chemistry were the cause of these children to go to university. The intervening time passed, the children who went to university graduated and they wanted to spread this system in Europe, Germany, France and Switzerland. The students who graduated from universities were now engineers, doctors and more.

Generally speaking, however, fewer schools were founded in Europe than in Turkey, which needs to be seen in the context of Tekalan’s observation that, in comparison with Turkey, “some things are too expensive”. More generally, of Gülen himself in the 1970s, Tekalan said 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”.

Operating for Hizmet today on a European, and especially (but not exclusively) European Union, level is the Dialogue Platform.¹ The anonymous interviewee, HE1, who is publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe, explains that the Platform was, in fact, originally “founded in 2000 to promote inter-faithdialogue in Belgium and they did a lot of inter-faith activities for more than five years all around Belgium”. However, on the basis of reflecting on its work and its increasing knowledge of Belgian society “they came to the conclusion that, in Belgium, there a lot of people who do not have a faith. Therefore, they decided to change the name and change the mission into a more inter-culturaldialogue one so that the activities might be more appealing to other people who don’t have faith”. Indeed, under its former Director Ramazan Güveli, the Platform had already decided that, given its location in Brussels, there was a strong need for a Hizmet interlocutor on the level of European institutions such as the European Parliament, the European Commission and also the Council of Europe. As interviewee HE1 explained it, “Of course, after 2016, after the coup attempt, I think they were most active for being the mouthpiece of Hizmet and also Fethullah Gülen in Brussels”.

The Platform’s website explains about itself that it is “a platform of Hizmet inspired dialogue organizations in Europe” and that it is:

A non-profit organization located in Brussels. The association acts as a mouthpiece for the European dialogue organisations associated with the Hizmet (a.k.a. Gülen movement). The platform also serves as the main information channel of Hizmet and Fethullah Gülen, who is the honorary president of the association. Inspired by the teachings and example of the Muslim/Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen, these organisations aim to advance and promote intercultural understanding, dialogical interaction and social cohesion in their respective societies. While each partner organisation retains its institutional independence, the Dialogue Platform supports coordination among them to ensure the exchange of best practice and experience. It also works to give a louder voice at the EU level of the initiatives carried out by its partner organisations. Dialogue Platform, moreover, fosters debate and analysis on various issues concerning a peaceful and respectful coexistence in European societies. By so doing, it aims to make practical contributions to the decision-making processes on relevant developments and issues impacting on community relations in Europe.

It notes that the Platform is especially interested to develop ideas and projects in relation to the fields of “Social and Community Cohesion”; “Citizenship and Democratic Engagement”; “Identity and Intercultural Understanding”; “Inter-Faith Dialogue and Religious Studies”; “Muslims in Europe”; “Peace-Building and Diplomacy”; “Education and Youth”. From the list of the Platform’s partner organisations, one can gain a good, although not fully, comprehensive sense of the range of Hizmet-related organisations in the European continent listing, as it does, organisations in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK as “our partners”, as well as noting other dialogue organisations in Europe linked with Hizmet including (see Sect. 3.11 in this chapter) Austria, theCzech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and (see Sect. 3.6 in this chapter) Switzerland.

Since July 2016, in common with many Hizmet organisations in Europe, the paid staffing base of the Intercultural Dialogue Platform has shrunk in size because of the reduction in funds flowing from Hizmet-supporting businesspeople in Turkey such that by 2019, the Platform had only three people working for it. However, the Platform has not been the only Hizmet-related organisation working on a cross-European level. There has also been the European Professionals’ Network,² founded in 2009 and also based in Brussels (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 58–59), and of which interviewee HE1 explained: “That association was actually promoting professional life, promoting students to have a professional occupation and also promoting the professionals with migrant backgrounds in both their private and professional lives”. There was also UNITEE—The New European Business Federation³—that was created in April 2011 and linked national federations and member associations representing entrepreneurs and business professionals from among the “New Europeans” across all major sectors of the European economy, including in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

2 Hizmet in the Netherlands

People began migrating from Turkey to the Netherlands in the early 1960s, with the Dutch government signing a “recruitment agreement” with Turkey in 1964. Among Muslim religious groups of Turkish origins, the Süleymanlı community was, in the early 1970s, the first to open mosques and to provide Qur’an courses for children (van Bruinessen 2013). However, from the late 1970s onwards, mosque associations supported by Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) increasingly developed. Following the 1980 coup in Turkey, part of the leadership of the politically Islamist Millî Görüş movement moved to Germany, from which base they developed a European-wide mosque-based network including in the Netherlands. In response, the Diyanet tried to exert influence through a network of state-sanctioned mosques and congregational centres. In the Netherlands (as in Germany) this resulted in a significant number of conflicts around the control of mosques. As a by-product of this, Islam in the Netherlands developed quite an extensive range of institutional actors (Canatan 2001; Doomernik 1995; Yükleyen 2012). In relation to this, as van Bruinessen notes, “The GM was a latecomer to this scene” (van Bruinessen 2013). Nevertheless, the Netherlands was also one of the earliest locations for the development of Hizmet in Europe.

Key scholarly publications that trace the history and activities of Hizmet in the Netherlands include Van Bruinessen’s (2013) article on “The Netherlands and the Gülen Movement” and Steenbrink’s (2015) book chapter on “Gülen in the Netherlands Between Pious Circles and Social Emancipation”, while Peppinck’s (2012) book chapter discusses aspects of the communication to, and reception by, the wider Dutch society of some of the key aspects of Gülen’s teaching. Among other publications on Hizmet in the Netherlands are Canatan’s (2001) doctoral thesis that examines matters of organisation and leadership within Turkish Islam in the Netherlands, including some discussion of the Hizmet movement. From a position hostile to Hizmet in the Netherlands there is a dossier compiled by Fähmel (2009).

Today there are a large number of organisations in the Netherlands that are associated with Hizmet. These include the educational foundation Cosmicus; the entrepreneurial association HOGIAF⁴ (Helpt Ondernemers Groeien in Alle Facetten, or Helping Entrepreneurs to Grow in all Aspects); the Kennisplein (or, Knowledge Place) educational centres; the Zaman Today and Zaman Hollanda newspapers; and the charitable organisation Time to Help. One of the key Hizmet organisations is the dialogue-focused Platform INS.⁵ This is based in Amsterdam and was founded in 2012, having emerged out of a previous Foundation Islam and Dialogue that was originally established in Rotterdam in 1998. The name “INS” derives from the Arabic word ‘iinsan (meaning person or human being), of which the website of Platform INS explains that “InS is about what people can do together and how we learn to understand the art of living together”.

Platform INS is registered in the Netherlands as a Public Benefit Institution. According to its website, its overarching purpose is that “we see it as our goal to counter the divisions in society and to join forces with everyone who also wants to contribute to this”. To achieve this, Platform INS focuses on the aim to “Facilitate meeting between people who don’t normally meet”; through serious engagement to “Establish the dialogue in an attempt to get to know each other in depth”; and through co-operation to “Establish partnerships and work together to solve shared problems”. Having engaged in dialogue over many years, the Platform is now seeking to break out of the circle of dialogue with only like-minded people into establishing a dialogical engagement with those that, in Dutch, it describes as andersdenkenden (or, as often translated into English, “dissenters”).

For its governance, Platform INS has a Board consisting of a Chair, Secretary and Treasurer, whose names are published on its website and an Advisory Board which the website explains “meets several times a year” and “advises Platform INS on the policy”, while noting that this advice in “not binding”. At the time of writing the organisation had four paid positions: a Director, a Programme Manager, a Public Relations Officer and a Communications Officer. It advances its work through “Friends” who volunteer and can give money and who, its website notes, are active in twenty-six cities in the Netherlands, as well as through “Partners” who share in collaborative planning and initiatives.

A key interviewee in relation to the developmental history of Hizmet in the Netherlands is Alper Alasag⁶ (see Acknowledgements) from the Netherlands overleg which, as Alasag explains, is “the group which comes together every couple of weeks to discuss things about Hizmet. Overleg means coming together and discussing things and then taking decisions”. Reflecting on the development of Hizmet in the Netherlands, Alasag says that “Hizmet started here in the late 1970s. When Gülen came to Germany, he met some people and they asked him to send an imam who would tell the same way how they can integrate in the society and be a part of it as a Muslim”. As he recounts it, this was because although the people very much warmed to Gülen, “Gülen was sent by Diyanet only for Ramadan and he went back”. In response to this, Alasag recalls that Gülen “asked a friend of his, Necdet Başaran” if he was willing to go and stay in Düren, a city in the German state of North Rhine–Westphalia close to the border with the Netherlands.

However, the original plan encountered difficulties because, as recalled by Alasag, there were differences of opinion in the Düren mosque arising from the fact that “Gülen was part of Diyanet, part of the system”. Therefore, although “Başaran was not sent by the Diyanet” but rather “It was Fethullah Gülen’s own request”, in the end Başaran had to leave the Düren mosque. From what might be called this “false start”, Alasag said of Başaran that “if I remember it correctly he went to Brussels and then he came to Holland” and when in Schiedam, near Rotterdam, he “had some people from his own town in Turkey, so they helped him and he was giving lessons to their children, Qur’an lessons, and he was preaching”. Alasag noted that, from this base, by the beginning of the 1980s, they had rented “a small place where they could preach but also give lessons to the children”. Therefore that, with regard to the origins of Hizmet in the Netherlands, “it started in this way”.

The organisation that was founded in 1981 was called the Akyazılı Foundation (named after the institute founded by Fethullah Gülen in Izmir, in 1972), and of which Yükleyen and Tunagür (2013) note that it “had its own prayer hall open to the public” (p. 228), but also that within a year the focus of its work was changed to that of education only. What is also clear from Alasag’s testimony is the wider role played by Başaran in the early European development and networking of Hizmet. As Alasag put it “Başaran had been to many places so people knew him”. Therefore, just as in Schiedam in the Netherlands:

The same was also in Belgium. In Brussels was also a dormitory. In Ghent was also one. And in Germany, in a couple of places, like in Düsseldorf, in Köln, there were small places where people came together to read. So, they rented 100 square metre rooms where they could come together and read books etc.

To this Alasag added that “There were also people from Switzerland”. Başaran was clearly a nodal point in this developing network in relation to which, as Alasag explained it, “They were all coming to Holland, because Holland was a kind of centre because Başaran was living in Rotterdam. All came to Holland to visit him”.

When he himself first arrived in the Netherlands in 1989, Alasag recalls that what Hizmet consisted of at that point was “people coming together reading books, listening to the sermons of Gülen, and engaging with children. And dormitory for youngsters, helping their homework, giving extra lessons, and helping each other. So that was the Hizmet”. Building on that, Hizmet people began to take other kinds of initiatives which, in 1989, included the development of the first dormitory in the Netherlands in relation to which Alasag notes that “The dormitory in Rotterdam was also bought with the money of all these people from these countries, as well. So, they contributed. It was not only a Dutch initiative. It was the first Hizmet initiative, so people supported it from all over Europe”.

From the beginnings of this dormitory, “In 1990, the dershanes, student houses started. And it spread very quickly. In the first year there were, like, six houses. At the end of the third year eleven, and then it was thirty-three, and then it was more up to one hundred or so”. At the same time, “people were coming to Rotterdam visiting and saying we would also like a dormitory”. One of the unforeseen consequences of such growth in the number of dormitories is that the number of dershanes reduced, partly because “All the students who kind of had the ability to talk to other students and help them out—who could be a role model and could work in the dormitory—they went to the dormitories to help in this initiative”. In summary, Alasag’s evaluation was that:

This dormitory was a kind of an answer in the Dutch context, because the dormitory gave the children the possibility to have a good education and integrate in the Dutch society, and this was a good solution for the parents who were kind of afraid that they lose their identity. Because we are Muslims the parents were trusting us their children, if they wanted to pray, or whatever their needs were for their education, they could get all the help they wanted from us, and also that we would guide them and help them in the Dutch society in the schools and in other areas of the society.

In fact, the idea of these dormitories became more widely inspirational in Europe beyond the Netherlands with Alasag saying, “I know that in the 1990s and in the beginning of the 2000s, even from Germany, even from Belgium, from different municipalities, people were coming—the local government were sending people to see this initiative and to promote it in their own municipality”. And in the Netherlands itself “it was appreciated and so much so that, in the mid-2000s, these initiatives had received money from the government, as a support and appreciation, to improve the conditions of the dormitories”. This was because, at the time, “other groups were sending their children still to Turkey” which was largely because:

The parents who couldn’t speak Dutch, and didn’t know the Dutch society very well, and came from a lower class, from a village for example, and didn’t have a good education, they couldn’t control or help their children. So, they were anxious and afraid that the children would do drugs or whatever, and they couldn’t protect their children from such things. So, they were sending their children to their families in Turkey. In all different levels of the society Turkey was seen as a kind of remedy, or solution for how to take care of our children.

As Yükleyen and Tunagür noted in their 2013 chapter on the movement in Western Europe, there were at that time seven student dormitories co-ordinated by the Landelijk Overleg Schoolinternaten (LOS). From these beginnings in the 1990s, other educational initiatives began to take shape because the community was “getting bigger and bigger each year and had other needs than only taking care of the children”. As Alasag recalls it, one of the first was “a business association for the Turkish businessmen” and that “after that came a student organization” and then,

In the second part of the 1990s they came together and also opened platforms. So, there were national platforms for education, for student initiatives, for business associations or whatever. Some of them like Business Association was national, and then opened departments in different cities, smaller initiatives. Some of them were local and then opened platforms.

From the relatively early times of Hizmet in the Netherlands there had also been dialogue initiatives. Thus, Alasag recounts that “People think that dialogue had started in the 1990s. It isn’t true”. Rather “when the Muslim people from different countries and asylum-seekers and other immigrants came here, the Churches took the initiative and tried to involve all those Muslims in these dialogue settings”. What, however, many in the Christian Churches who took part in these early initiatives discovered was that:

They couldn’t find many people who were willing, apart from the Dutch people who became Muslims. So, they were kind of representing the Muslims in the dialogue. And the only group who took part in dialogue besides the Dutch people—or Surinami people, or the Indonesian people who were already integrated and knew the Dutch society and could speak Dutch—the only group as immigrants was as far as I know, our group in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, it continued.

Again referring to his personal experience in 1989, when he first arrived in the country, “there was an interfaith group which came together every couple of months in the church and sometimes in our centre”. In the Netherlands, there has been a long history of engagement with religious difference that was traditionally framed within the historical model known in the Dutch language as Verzuiling (often translated into English via the rather clumsy word, “pillarisation”). In the early days of increased religious diversity, there were attempts to “stretch” this historic tradition in order also to accommodate Islam and Muslims (Rath et al. 1997). Commenting on the legacy of VerzuilingAlasag noted that “Now it is weaker” but that, nevertheless, “In Holland, inter-faithdialogue is a way of living, because half of the population is Catholic and the other half Protestant, and the Protestants are also divided”.

Out of this active early “pre-history” of Hizmet dialogue in the Netherlands, Alasag noted that in 1989 the organisation Islam and Dialogue emerged, which he described as “the only active Muslim dialogue organization in Dutch society which was engaging in dialogue in Dutch”. Its growth was exponential, with Alasag reflecting that, “when we started in 1998, immediately thirty-five organizations with which we were in touch came to us and they said let’s organize something. In the next year it was around seventy. And in the year after 9/11 it was three hundred”. The impact of the 9/11 terror attacks on the USA and their aftermath meant that there was an increase in demand from the wider society for reliable dialogue partners. Alasag attributes this successful development to the fact that “we could give information in Dutch, and had our documents in Dutch, and we were willing to engage in dialogue”.

Among the range of organisations that emerged in the mid-2000s was, as also happened in many other European countries, the previously mentioned business association HOGIAF, set up in 2006. However it was the opening of a Hizmet school which Alasag characterised as being a watershed moment to the extent that “when the school opened, everything changed”. As Alasag describes the history of this, “In 2006, the students’ organization came into contact with the Ministry of Education and asked that they done so many things in the field of education, if it isn’t time to open a school”. The context for this was that in the Netherlands the majority of schools are so-called “charter schools” which means that if one has an educational vision it is, in principle, possible to open a school based on that vision using public funding. In this context:

Our student association, its name was Cosmicus, they had developed an educational vision on world citizenship. So, on that vision they approached the Ministry to open a school and the Ministry received this very openly and very positively. But some civil servants advised to open the first school with another educational organization, a Dutch one, as a co-operation. So, it opened with another Dutch school in co-operation.

What was important about this for Hizmet’s wider development in the Netherlands was that this school was not only for Hizmet children. However, due to this initiative Hizmet found that it had come into wider public view and scrutiny including, from some quarters, opposition. In this context, uniquely in Europe, a whole period of successive investigations (see Sect. 5.2) into the nature of Hizmet followed which, in turn, stimulated a range of responses concerned with transparency (see Sect. 5.4) out of which Alasag says that because of what he calls “the Dutch dynamic of pushing” in the end “we became more Dutch and part of this dynamic. We played the game according to its rules. I feel because of all these developments of the last twelve years, I feel myself more Dutch, more integrated, and a part of this society than before. So, it helped us”. Indeed, overall, it was Alasag’s view that “The dialogue had helped us, but this process helped us a lot more”. Therefore, in summary, through all the suspicions and scrutiny, their experience had been that “the more negative was the news about us, the more positive were the results. The bigger the accusation, the more positive the reaction was from the society, and also from the government”.

3 Hizmet in Germany

People of Turkish background from Turkey itself, but also from the Balkans and from Cyprus, together form the largest minority ethnic group in Germany, and Germany has the largest population of people of Turkish origin outside of Turkey. Following West Germany’s so-called Wirtschaftswunder (or, economic miracle), the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 led to a fall in the number of labour migrants from the former East Germany. Therefore, on 30 October 1961, the West German government signed a labour recruitment agreement with Turkey. Soon after that, German employers pressed the government to end that agreement’s original two-year limitation on workers staying in the country. In 1974, the introduction of family unification rights led to a large increase in the number of people of Turkish origin. After German re-unification in 1990, and subsequent outbreaks of violence against Ausländer (or, foreigners), an intense social and political debate took place that led to the gradual acceptance of the principle of Germany being a multi-cultural society, with many people of Turkish origin becoming German citizens.

The Turkish Islamic organisational scene became quickly developed in quite an extensive way, with a range of institutional actors (Doomernik 1995; Yükleyen 2012). These include the Türkisch-Islamische Union der Anstalt für Religion e.V. (Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs)⁷ often referred to as the DİTİB (after the initial of its Turkish name of Diyanet İşleri Türk-İslam Birliği), founded in 1984. With its headquarters being at the Cologne Central Mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, it funds many of the mosques in Germany. There is also the Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland (Central Council of Muslims in Germany).⁸ Other important Turkish Muslim organisations include the Islamische Gemeinschaft Millî Görüş,⁹ which is close to the Islamist Saadet Partisi in Turkey and has its base in Kerpen near Cologne. There is also the Jamaat un-Nur, Deutschland, which is the German branch of the Risale-i Nur Society; the KRM, Co-Ordinating Council of Muslims¹⁰; and the DIK, the Deutsche Islam Conference.¹¹ Finally, there is the Deutsche Muslimische Gemeinschaft,¹² which is primarily composed of Arab Muslims and is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Finally, beyond the boundaries of Sunni Islam, there is the Islamische Gemeinschaft der schiitischen Gemeinden Deutschlands (IGS)¹³ which links Shi’ite mosques and associations in Germany.

In relation to the emergence of Hizmet in Germany, key publications that trace this include Karakoyun and Steenbrink’s (2015) article on “The Hizmet Movement and Integration of Muslims in Germany”, while there is also Emre Demir’s web article on “The Gülen Movement in Germany and France”.¹⁴ Demir’s (2012) book chapter on “The Emergence of a Neo-Communitarian Discourse in the Turkish Diaspora in Europe” covers both France and Germany in its discussion of “the implementation strategies and competition logics” of the movement, while Agai’s now more dated (2004) book on Zwischen Netzwerk und Diskurs: Das Bildungsnetztwerk um Fethullah Gülen (or, Between Network and Discourse: The Educational Network around Fethullah Gülen) focuses primarily on Hizmet-related educational initiatives in Germany (and Albania). In relation to more recent developments, there is Koçak’s (2019) magazine article on “Hizmet und die Flüchtlingsfrage in Deutschland: Initiativen aus dem Raum Mitteldeutschland” (or, in translation by the present author, “Hizmet and the Refugee Question: Initiatives from Middle Germany”).

Already in the early 1970s Gülen had travelled to and within Germany. According to Öztürk, this was Gülen’s “initial encounter with the western world”. As previously noted, this visit was organised by the Diyanet in Turkey which traditionally arranged someone as an official imam to travel and preach to the Turkish faithful during the month of Ramadan. According to another of Gülen’s close associates, he returned to Germany again during Ramadan in 1977.

According to Ercan Karakoyun (see Acknowledgements), who is a key interviewee in relation to the developmental history of Hizmet in Germany, “when the first people of Hizmet came to Germany, of course at that time everything was very much Turkey orientated”. Initially there was a largely invisible informally networked and associational structure. However, “In the 1990s, the first institutions were founded in Germany: tuition centres, dormitories, so-called ‘lighthouses’, and after that of course many people who were born in Germany became engaged and active in the Hizmet movement”. As an anonymous Hizmet-related asylum-seeker interviewee AS1 (see Acknowledgements) from Turkey, and who had previously worked in Germany after finishing his education in Turkey, explained it:

I got acceptance from German universities and I attended one of them and I stayed four years in Germany. During that time in Germany, in so-called Nachhilfe Centers belong to the Hizmet Movement, I was a volunteer and I tried to teach the migrant children. This was in the Baden-Württenberg region. I was generally in Offenburg, Freiburg and in Stuggart. I tried to teach the children English and to help in their maths/mathematics problems. And, in free times, we also made some social activities, always trying together with them to be a good model for them.

Today in Germany there are a wide range of organisations and initiatives that are associated with Hizmet. As often the case elsewhere, many of the early initiatives were educational ones, with Yükleyen (2012, p. 50) noting that, at the time of his writing, there were around 200 tutoring centres in Germany. Building out from these individual educational initiatives were bottom-up organisational fora for the sharing of experience. Similarly, in relation to business, in 2009 eight historically separate individual associations merged to become the BUV, Bundesverband der Unternehmervereinigungen (or Federation of Entrepreneurs’ Associations, Germany), which now links around twenty bodies under its umbrella.¹⁵

In the field of dialogue, various associations that had begun from 2001 onwards were linked under the umbrella of the Bund Deutscher Dialog Institutionen (or, Federation of German Dialogue Institutions)¹⁶ which today consists of fifteen member organisations. These include the Forum für Interkulturellen Dialog (or, Forum for Intercultural Dialogue), in Berlin (which Karakoyun was tasked to found in 2008), and of which Karakoyun says, “You can say it is one of THE dialogue institutions in Berlin”. It also includes the Forum Dialog¹⁷ (or, Dialogue Forum) formed from a number of dialogue organisations from different Germany Bundesländer coming together in 2015. These include FID RLP e.V; Forum für Interculturellen Dialog e.V., based in Frankfurt am Main¹⁸; Forum Dialog Schleswig-Holstein; Idizem: Interkulturelle Dialog e.V; Idizem: Interkulturelles Dialogzentrum e.V, in the Munich area¹⁹; Idizem: Interkulturelles Dialogzentrum e.V. Nord Bayern; AID e.V.; Ruhr Dialog e.V.²⁰; Gesellschaft für Dialog Baden-Würtenburg Region Ulm; Gesellschaft für Dialog Baden-Würtenburg Region Stuttgart; Gesellschaft für Dialog Baden-Würtenburg Region Manheim; Forumdialog Hamburg; Forumdialog Kiel; Forumdialog Niedersachsen.²¹

The Society for Education and Promotion of Non-Profit GmbH (GEBIF),²² which especially aims to work with school leaders, teachers, trainees and pedagogical specialists in the school and pre-school sector, organised International Conferences on Peace Education in 2013 and 2015. The Federation has also sponsored a number of projects on its collaborative level such as, in 2013 and 2014, the German Dialogue Awards, while since 2015, it held an annual Dialogue Akademie.²³ In 2019, this met around the same theme as the sixth Materialen zu Dialog und Bildung (author translation: Materials for Dialogue and Education), namely that of “Group-Related Hostility”. Previous Akademies focused, in 2018, on “Gender Justice and Empowerment: Current Discourses and Strategies”; in 2017 on “Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion in the Immigration Society”); in 2016 on “Extremism Prevention” and on “Turkey-Germany Relations”; and in 2015 on “Universal Values and Youth Work”. Another initiative of the Federation was (the until 2015 so-called) German-Turkish Cultural Olympiad. Starting in 2013 and developing quite quickly from having only seventeen participating countries, what is now known as the International Festival of Language and Culture²⁴ involves 145 countries with more than 2000 participants.

There is also the Islam Kompact—Muslims Tell,²⁵ that was initiated by the Bund Deutscher Dialog Institutionen, but with participation also from Ruhr Dialog, which aims at profiling factually sound information about Islam and Muslims; Tulpe,²⁶ a platform for youth and family, founded in 2007 and based in Essen; die Fontäne,²⁷ the German language edition of Hizmet’s Fountain magazine, published since 2008 by Main-Donau Verlag GmbH, based in Frankfurt am Main, and serving a German language readership of over 20,000 people across Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and the VHS: Volkshochschule Leipzig, a municipal further education college.²⁸

Among the wider projects in which the Federation is collaboratively involved through the work of its partner organisation, the Muslim Dialogue Initiative Forum Dialog e.V., is the so-called House of One in Berlin,²⁹ and of which Karakoyun is an Advisory Board member. This works together with the Evangelical parish of St. Petri-St. Marien (which initiated the idea), and the Jewish Community of Berlin in conjunction with the Rabbinical Seminary Abraham-Geiger-Kolleg. As stated on its website, this is intended to be “A house of prayer and exchange about religions – open to all”. It is a grassroots project that aims to build under one roof a synagogue, a church and a mosque, with each built around a central space for encounter. In this regard at least, it has some resonances with Haus der Religionen—Dialog der Kulturen,³⁰ based in Bern, Switzerland.

In terms of Hizmet’s public profile on a national level in Germany, the Stiftung Dialog und Bildung (or, Dialogue and Education Foundation),³¹ which was founded in 2015, has come to fore. As Karakoyun (who has been its chair since the beginning) explained, it was founded “with the aim to be something like a spokesperson for the Hizmet movement in Germany because there were very critical newspaper articles in Germany about Hizmet and then we decided to make a step towards transparency in Germany”. Nevertheless, as Karakoyun clarified its role: “The Foundation is not the ‘roof’ of all institutions, but it speaks in terms of ideas and values of the Hizmet movement. So, I don’t speak for a special institution, or for different institutions, but for the idea that is behind all institutions, so for the idea of Hizmet”. Or, as the Stiftung’s website puts it:

The foundation provides information on Hizmet’s origins, development and activities in Germany, as well as on the ideas and work of Fethullah Gülen. If necessary, it provides contact with educational associations, dialogue initiatives, business associations, or refugee initiatives on the ground. In particular, the media and the political and social public are invited to enter into dialogue with the Foundation. The foundation advises and mediates scientific studies on Hizmet in Germany and serves as an important contact person, especially for scientists.

The Foundation publishes a magazine, Materialen zu Dialog und Bildung (or, for short DuB, in English, Materials on Dialogue and Education).³² The six editions of this, up until the time of writing this book, have been on the themes of: Gülen and Democracy³³; Interreligious Dialogue³⁴; Hizmet and Education³⁵; Hizmet and Universal Values³⁶; Responsibility and Engagement in Hizmet³⁷; and Group-Related Hostility.³⁸

In recent years in Germany, both vertical and horizontal organisational structures have developed, with the vertical ones professionally co-ordinating the voluntary commitments to particular areas of work, such as dialogue, in what aspires to be a transparent way. Horizontal networking exists in three state associations, which embrace all Hizmet associations across all topics in each of the states of Nord-Rhein Westfalen, Baden Wurtenburg and Berlin. These are the Verband engagierte Zivilgesellschaft in NRW e.V (Association of Committed Civil Society in NRW e.V.) in Nord-Rhine Westfalen, founded in 2014 and with over sixty member organisations³⁹; the Landesverband für bürgerschaftliches Engagement e.V. (State Association for Citizenship Engagement)⁴⁰ in Baden-Württemberg, now with over forty member organisations;⁴¹ and the Verband für gesellschaftliches Engagement (Association for Social Engagement) in Berlin, founded in 2014 by bringing together around twenty organisations from the capital and the surrounding areas.⁴² Hessen, Bavaria and North Germany do not yet have any registered associations but there are state-level meetings, and leaders from all these structures now meet together in a Hizmet Germany working group where the focus is on the mutual exchange of knowledge and experience.

4 Hizmet in Belgium

Systematic migration of what were originally Turkish “guest workers” in Belgium originally began when, in 1964, Turkey and Belgium signed a mutual agreement. The majority came from rural areas of central Anatolia, especially from Afyon, Eskisehir and Kayseri. Following settlement in Belgian industrial areas, when Belgium began to encourage family reunion as part of addressing its challenge of a low population growth, many also brought their families. In the 1970s, many Turkish people came on tourist visas and stayed to find work, with the Belgian government improvising to regularise their status on a number of occasions. Early on in this period associations were founded that focused on language, folklore, cultural, educational, funeral and, to some extent, religious needs. In the 1970s, students, intellectuals and trade unionists who had fled from Turkey’s fractured and often violent left-right conflicts established themselves especially in university cities such as Gent, Liège and Brussels, with their associations focused primarily on the politics of Turkey.

By the 1980s, primary migration was no longer possible, but only for family reunification or as an asylum-seeker, a number of whom (including Kurds) came from Turkey itself, while others were ethnic Turks from Bulgaria or Macedonia. By this time, Turkish civil society organisations began to emerge that were more concerned with forging their future within Belgium, a process that accelerated by the 1990s. This included catering for religious needs. Religiously speaking, the majority of people of Turkish Muslim background in Belgium are Sunni Muslims, with the Millî Görüş and Süleymanci groups predominating, but also with a Nurcu presence and the official Diyanet, which controls most of the Turkish-related mosques in Belgium. In terms of legal identity, the Diyanet in Belgium dates back to 1983. It was originally known as the Turkish Islamic Religious Foundation of Belgium; then as the Turkish International Islamic Religious Association of Belgium; and is now known as the International Diyanet Association of Belgium. Until 2018, an attaché of the Turkish Embassy presided over it.

Beyond the Sunni Muslim presence in Belgium there is also an Alevi one, while following Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union, the numbers of people of Turkish heritage originating originally from Bulgaria increased still further. In relation specifically to the development of Hizmet in Belgium, Leman’s (2015) book chapter on “Belgium’s Gülen-Hizmet Movement Histories, Structures and Initiatives” provides a useful overview, while an important historical source for this book has been the interviewee, Özgür Tascioglu, the Secretary General of the organisation, Fedactio (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 14), who explained that:

In the 1990s, the first people of Hizmet came to Belgium and they started to unite with each other to form a Turkish community. There were three problems here within this new generation Turkish community in the 1990s: education, integration and identity-forming. So, the second and third generation was a bit torn between their Belgian and their Turkish identity. That’s why Hizmet created education centres to help people with this process. Within a few years, with the support of businessmen these educational centres became schools.

For example, on 1 September 2005, L’école des Etoiles (or, School of the Stars) opened as a primary school started by some Turkish entrepreneurs, parents and teachers (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 46–49). However, such was the parental demand for places, the school moved into new and larger, former industrial premises in Haren. From 2007, it linked also with the L’école L’Avenir (School of the Future) in Charleroi, and then became known as L’école des Etoiles de Charlerois. Today, its website states that it is “a free non-denominational school open to all” that “is subsidized by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation”, being “subject to the decrees and prerogatives set by the Federation and respects its curriculum”. Also, “It respects all philosophical and religious convictions, leaving parents free choice of philosophical courses that will be given to their children”.⁴³ In 2012, it was able to open the secondary education College of Stars, also on the Haren site. In 2014, the School of the Stars of Liège was started in Chênée, while a College of Stars was also added to the Charleroi site. Overall, the Star School Centre now operates with a total of 1000 students and 45 teachers in 5 separate schools. Its vision is one of global education built around intellectual, personal and social development.

Alongside education as a major focus, businesspeople of Turkish origin were also concerned with dialogue between the Turkey and Belgium, and in 1996–1997, the Belgian-Turkish Entrepreneurs’ Association was formed by twelve businessmen operating in various Belgian cities. In 2008, the Association supported the establishment of Prisma, an after-school supplementary education and youth centre based in Schaerbeek (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 50–51). In 2008, the Association came together with other organisations that had “similar missions like Unaco, Uniekon, Ashea, Mercury, Action, and the European Professional Network”, in a general assembly to federate as the Betiad, the Federation of Active Entrepreneurs⁴⁴ (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 40–45). Betiad today offers services to around 1200 entrepreneurs through six associations which are based in Brussels, Charleroi, Limburg, Gent, Antwerp and Liege. Betiad, in its turn, started a dialogue with other organisations and groups and, on 30 May 2010, twenty-five organisations active in various fields came together across Belgium under the name of Federation of Active Organizations—Fedactio.

Fedactio’s website states that “Together we want to encourage all citizens to actively participate in society and we strive, amongst others, for a more democratic and inclusive society” and that towards such an end “it initiates, encourages and supports meaningful projects on different domains such as women’s rights, education, social cohesion, multiculturality and interreligious dialogue”.⁴⁵ In relation to ethnicity and religion, the website states that “Fedactio is not an ethnic organization. Although Fedactio has its roots in the Turkish community, the organization directs its activities towards all Belgian citizens”, and also that “Fedactio is not a religious organization, but our founders derive their motivation from their faith. As an organization, Fedactio adopts an independent and neutral approach”.

Nevertheless, Fedactio acknowledges that “Initially, our founders were drawn to one another by their shared sense of responsibility towards society, inspired by the ideas of Muslim-intellectual Fethullah Gülen”. At the same time, it also makes clear in relation to “the Gülen-movement” that “The movement is represented by ‘Dialogue Platform’ and not by Fedactio”. With regard to the ideals of Hizmet, interviewee Özgur Tascioglu from Belgium (see Acknowledgements) says that “Fedactio endorses the most important ideals conveyed by the Gülen-movement, among which are the combat against poverty, ignorance and conflicts”, but with regard to the people involved in Fedactio:

They are not only Hizmet people, they are also community volunteers. For example, all the Gülen schools in Belgium are schools funded by the state and most of the Directors are Belgians. So, the founders and the people who support it financially are inspired by the Gülen movement, but the schools in themselves are funded and implemented by the state.

Tascioglu explained that, at the time of the interview, in September 2019, Fedactio had forty-five affiliated organisations across six cities. Its way of working is that “we co-ordinate and mostly work together on concrete projects. Sometimes we do different co-ordinations on projects and then we communicate around them”. In relation to its affiliates “We share the same objectives but Fedactio has a more global approach than the local organizations. Fedactio has also been founded from the outset to showcase its members’ activities”. Tascioglu’s role helps to develop new projects and to co-ordinate Fedactio’s regional managers in the different cities of Belgium where Fedactio is based, namely: Antwerp, Brussels, East-Flanders, Hainault, Liège and Linders.

Before becoming Fedactio’s Secretary General, Tascioglu had been a regional co-ordinator in Charleroi in Belgium. Prior to migrating to Belgium in 2016, he had worked as a journalist for the Zaman newspaper in Switzerland. In summary, Tascioglu explained Fedactio as follows: “Fedactio is like an umbrella federation for different organizations and was started in 2010. It works mainly on educational and multi-cultural projects and also inter-religious dialogue projects. It has different platforms and each platform initiates different projects which they work on”. Its Platforms originally included Culture, Arts and Media; Education and Youth; Entrepreneurs and Professionals; Social Cohesion and Dialogue; and Woman and Society (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 28–37). They are now structured as Art and Culture; Education; Entrepreneurs; Professionals; Social Cohesion and Dialogue; Solidarity and Human Aid; and Youth. Among the large number of organisations still operating today under these Platforms are those noted below, albeit that in addition to these were also many others that no longer exist, hence giving some idea of the organisational range and vitality generated under Fedactio’s umbrella.

The Art and Culture Platform includes: La Tulipe, a cultural initiative oriented towards neighbourhood level togetherness and based in Charleroi,⁴⁶ Liège⁴⁷ and Mons⁴⁸ (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 92–93). The Education Platform includes: BS—Belgium Student Platform, which was founded in 2011 as an umbrella organisation for Oxgyene Plus in Brussels; Academic Vision in Antwerp; Synergy in Ghent; Integraal from Limburg and Uniwaal from Wallonia, which came together (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 54–57). BS is now based in Brussels, Antwerp,⁴⁹ Limburg⁵⁰ and Charleroi (Hainault) and Liège; Compass Onderwijs en Begeleidingscentrum (or, Compass Education and Guidance Centre) founded in 2004 (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 78) in Willebroek, Antwerp; Francolympiades,⁵¹ based in Brussels and has organised a range of educational Olympiads for French-speaking children (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 68–69).

Meridiaan Gemeenschaptscentrum vzw⁵² (or Meridiaan Community Centre) is based in Gent and was originally founded in 1999 as a supplementary education centre, in 2010 merging also with the Gouden Generatie (Golden Generation) association becoming the Gouden Meridian (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 80), and then in 2016 further merging with three other non-profit organisations in Aalst, Sint-Niklaas, Zele to extend its original educational and youth work also into socio-cultural and charitable works. Then there is also Prisma, an education and youth centre providing supplementary education, based in Brussels, and founded in 1998 (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 50–51); Turkse oudervereniging in België (or, Belgian Turkish Parent Association), based in Brussels, Antwerp and Limburg (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 70–73); Vlaamse Olympiade Vereniging (or Flemish Olympiad Association) which has organised science, mathematics and social science Olympiad competitions for children (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 66–67). Finally, there is Vuslat Gemeenschaptscentrum⁵³ (or Vuslat Community Centre, the Dutch word Vuslat meaning “come together, find each other”) with its head office in Hasselt (Limburg), but also having centres in Genk, Maasmeschelen, Heusden and Beringen, all in Limburg.

The Entrepreneurs Platform includes Betiad, the Federation of Active Entrepreneurs, based in Brussels, but also present in Antwerp, Charleroi (Hainault), Liège and Hasselt (Limburg).⁵⁴ The Social Cohesion and Dialogue Platform includes Academie New Generation⁵⁵education and youth centre (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 74), which was founded in 1996, is based in Merksem, Antwerp, and provides supplementary tutoring for primary and secondary school–age children; ASBL Dialogue,⁵⁶ established in 2008 and based in Charleroi (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 98–99); Beltud, the Belgian-Turkish Friendship Association, founded in 2010, based in Brussels (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 60–63), and also represented in East Flanders in Gent, in Antwerp and Limburg,⁵⁷ and in Hainault, where it is present under the Francophone name of Cedicow—Centre pour la Diversité et la Cohésion en Wallonie and was founded in 2008 (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 96–97); Vlaams Intercultureel Dialoog, Gent began as a resource for religious and spiritual needs and an information centre for those interested in Islam (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 82); and, finally, the Vuslat Gemeenschaptscentrum which are also part of the Education Platform (for further details see above).

The Women and Society Platform includes the Golden Rose⁵⁸ that supports women’s participation in the wider society (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 52–53). This was founded in 2009 by eighteen women and has over two hundred active members, with bases in both Brussels and Hasselt (Limburg). It also includes Inspiration,⁵⁹ launched in 2009 and based in Antwerp (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, pp. 76–77); and Khoza,⁶⁰ based in Gent and founded in 2005 (Hazırlyan ed. 2012, p. 84). The Youth Platform includes For Youth,⁶¹ based in Brussels and Antwerp and the BS—Belgium Student Platform, which is also part of the Education Platform.

Among Fedactio’s projects are Colours of the World,⁶² an international music, dance and poetry festival that is under the patronage of UNESCO, and is run in Belgium by Fedactio in partnership with its member organisation Beltud⁶³ (Association d’Amitié belgo-turque/Vereniging voor Belgisch-Turkse Vriendschap, or Association for Belgian-Turkish Friendship). Beltud was founded in 2010 with an aim of promoting dialogue and of strengthening friendship between different communities living in Belgium and especially Belgian-Turkish relations. Iftarmee⁶⁴ is a national project in which non-Muslims are welcomed by host families to share in Iftar meals during Ramadan. Then, in the field of education, there is SOWO⁶⁵ (Sociale wetenschappen Olympiades, or Social Science Olypiads) for pupils of third-grade secondary education; Pangea-wiskundequiz⁶⁶ (or, Pangea Mathematics Quiz); as well as the Tekenwedstrijd: Kunst van het samenleven⁶⁷ (or, Art of Co-Existence Drawing Contest). Overall, the diverse work of Fedactio is promoted via its own YouTube channel.⁶⁸

An important institutional presence of Hizmet in Belgium is that of the Gülen Chair at the Catholic University of Leuven, established in 2010. Interviewee and scholar at the University, Erkan Toğuşlu, from Belgium (see Acknowledgments, section 1), is responsible for this, while at the same time having a voluntary role in Fedactio. In relation to this voluntary role, Toğuşlu said:

I sometimes helped to co-ordinate the dialogue activities and social cohesion activities under the Fedactio umbrella. So, what I do is organise some of the events, for example, with other colleagues within Fedactio, for the whole of Belgium: what kind of activities can we organise; what we need; what the movement needs. So, these are some of the activities in which I take part for almost six or seven years, from the beginning of Fedactio.

With regard to the Gülen Chair, Toğuşlu explained that it is a joint initiative between the Intercultural Dialogue Platform and Leuven University and that:

They came together from before 2010 to establish a kind of Chair or research unit to do some research on, especially Islam and Muslim countries living in Europe, specifically in Western Europe. This was the basic idea because at that time still, I think, Islam became a hard topic, and nowadays as well. But the specialists of the university discovered that there wasn’t such a unique programme or research centre that focused specifically on Muslim communities, or on Muslim participation in social, political and economic life in western Europe, so there was a need. And in that sense they thought that the Gülen movement may be a good partner and also interlocutor, as they are coming from the Muslim community, they know the field, and they are very active in education as well.

Toğuşlu went on to further explain that, at its beginning, three specific areas of research were emphasised. These were dialogue or social cohesion between Muslim communities and the wider society; the economic participation of Muslims, and specifically of Muslim entrepreneurs; and, finally, Muslim women. As the Chair developed and other issues emerged, new foci around radicalisation and the media have also been added. Within this overall framework, the Chair organises lecture series and international conferences; it publishes books with the Leuven University Press; and it publishes its own journal, Hizmet Studies Review, the inside covers of which state that it is:

A scholarly peer-reviewed international journal on the Hizmet Movement. It provides an interdisciplinary forum for critical research and reflection upon the development of Fethullah Gülen’s ideas and Gülen Movement (Hizmet movement). Its aim is to publish research and analysis that discuss Fethullah Gülen’s ideas, views and intellectual legacy and Hizmet Movement’s wider social, cultural and educational activities.

Every year the Chair has tried to secure one new PhD student that it can financially and educationally support in various different departments within its Faculty at KU Leuven. The Chair is based in the social sciences, but it also invites theologians, professors from law and the political sciences, and people from the media to explore and explain the issues and/or current debates around and between Islam and contemporary Muslim communities. The collaboration is based on an agreement which is reviewed every five years.

5 Hizmet in the United Kingdom (UK)

The majority of people of Turkish origin in the UK live in England and came from Turkey for employment, with others coming under the 1963 Ankara Agreement, as updated in 1973 and which made permanent residence in the UK more flexible and possible for Turkish businesspeople. In the case of the UK, though, because it was the former colonial power in Cyprus, there is also a long-standing strong Turkish Cypriot presence, especially in London, which especially developed between the 1940s and early 1960s. In relation to Hizmet’s development in the UK, Fatih Tedik has an historical web page on “The Gülen Movement’s Initiatives in Britain”,⁶⁹ and the present author has a book chapter on “Hizmet in the United Kingdom” (Weller 2015), although in practice the chapter focuses primarily on England. This, to a large extent, also reflects the geographical concentration of the wider Turkish diaspora which has historically generally provided the core impetus for Hizmet initiatives.

In relation to Hizmet in England, there is a short book by Sanaa El-Banna (2013) that illustrates its overall discussion and argument about Hizmet as a new type of social movement with special reference to both Turkey and England, although in practice the part of the book concerned with England is more narrowly and specifically focused on London. This, again, reflects the geographical concentration of the Turkish-origin population within England itself and is complemented by a more recent journal article from Caroline Tee (2018). From a position hostile to Hizmet and published by SETA, the Ankara, Turkey-based Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, there is a report (Bayrakli et al. 2018) that is focused on Hizmet in the UK.

In relation to the province of Northern Ireland, Jonathan Lacey wrote a book chapter on “An Exploration of the Strategic Dimensions of Dialogue in a Gülen Movement Organization in Northern Ireland” (Lacey 2012). Here, the Hizmet-related Northern Ireland Tolerance, Educational and Cultural Association was founded as a limited company in 2016. On the UK Charity Commission’s website, the Association’s offices were recorded as being in Belfast and the charity’s objects were described as being:

For the advancement of reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity for the public benefit by any lawful means but including the following: (1) For the benefit of the public to advance and promote inter-cultural, inter-communal dialogue, understanding and appreciation in NI. (2) For the benefit of the public to encourage, undertake, sponsor and contribute towards academic research, work and publication that relates to inter-cultural, inter-communal dialogue in NI will contribute either directly or indirectly towards advancing appreciation and understanding of cultures, communities in NI. (3) To advance the education of students in NI with a view of providing them with help and support towards their academic studies, helping them forge partnership academic work projects, encouraging them to support ongoing projects of the organisation and overall encouraging them to contribute towards raising interest in inter-culturaldialogue studies.⁷⁰

In 2018, the limited company associated with this initiative was dissolved, but on the island of Ireland, there is now also a new development called Eire Dialogue (see further below under Sect. 3.11). In relation to Wales and Scotland, nothing substantial has so far been published concerning Hizmet activities there and, indeed, until recently, Hizmet has had very little organised activity in these countries. However, in Scotland there is a Glasgow-based initiative called the Nurture Educational and Multicultural Society. This was originally founded in 2004, and, in 2015, it acquired a substantial former listed church building together with a sports hall, offices, manse and grounds which, however, needs substantial refurbishment before it will be possible to run a full range of activities within it.⁷¹

In relation to the developmental history of Hizmet in the UK, a key interviewee is Özcan Keleş (see Acknowledgements). He explained that “It was 1993 or 1994 or thereabouts, I think when Fethullah Gülen came here twice. At the time, in 1994, we know definitively that Axis Educational Trust was founded, which is a Gülen-inspired educational entity”. According to Keleş, one of the first things that Axis⁷² did was to purchase a large house in Finchley, North London, that they used as a hostel at which Gülen stayed when he visited the UK in 1994. Inspired by the examples in Turkey, people in London wanted to create an educational initiative. But because developing a school was such a big challenge, they initially took over a lease on Seven Sisters Road to start English language courses, tuition courses and IT classes. This was done in the hope that these educational initiatives would, in due course, transition into a school and, in 1996, the Trust created the London Meridian College Primary and Secondary School. Although a private school, in order that it could maintain access for children whose families were struggling financially, it charged a relatively modest fee. Partly as a by-product of this, the school did not prove financially sustainable and the initiative was therefore put “on hold”.

As Keleş explained, in this period, much of Hizmet’s developmental work depended on people who came to the UK from Turkey on Turkish Interior Ministry scholarships to do doctorates and they created an Academics’ Association. However, unlike the FountainMagazine, which was also an early activity that survived and grew internationally, the Association did not survive and, with this, what could be seen as the first phase of Hizmet development in the UK came to an end.

For much of the time Hizmet has been active in the UK, a key organisation within it has been the Dialogue Society, a registered charity established in London in 1999.⁷³ The Society currently organises its work around three main fields: the academic, the community and policy outreach. It has the key aims of advancing social cohesion by connecting communities; empowering people to engage; and contributing to the development of ideas on dialogue and community building, all of which it does primarily by bringing people together through discussion forums, courses, capacity-building, publications and outreach.

From its origins, the Society projected its self-understanding as being neither a religious nor an ethnic organisation. It aims to facilitate dialogue on a whole range of social issues, regardless of any particular faith or religion. Unlike in the Netherlands, the Dialogue Society in the UK, despite its name, has not had such a focus on inter-religious dialogue, or even cross-cultural dialogue, though neither was excluded. Of this, Keleş recalls:

I was much younger then and I was involved in the first meetings and I remember how we were discussing logos, and the name. And then it was quite interesting actually how when we discussed specifically whether we should call it the Inter-Faith Dialogue Society and immediately there was a consensus that we shouldn’t do that because it would be too narrow, and that it may evolve. So, I mean that was interesting to see that we were able to discuss that at the time. So, we had this more expansive idea of the Dialogue Society.

Nevertheless, in Keleş’ evaluation, “we went through this period of decline which he put down to there have been “no community-building”. In recognition of the need to address that, between 1999 and 2007, the majority of the Society’s work focused on community dialogue, a significant part of which was, nevertheless, related to inter-faith activity. This included the organisation of an annual “Essentials of Peace Conference” which focused on the exploration of common themes and characteristics among the Prophets of the Abrahamic religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Between 2004 and 2007, the Society also sponsored a significant number of Whirling Dervishes events as well as fast-breaking dinners, the latter of which included hall-based events by invitation and also marquee events in city centres that were open to the public. Inter-faith picnics were organised and also Noah’s Pudding activities that consisted of encouraging people to visit and share Noah’s puddings with their neighbours. Although detailed records were not kept at the time about the earliest events, further information about many of these activities can be found in a chronological listing on the Dialogue Society website.⁷⁴

Overall, this early phase of the Dialogue Society’s development was characterised by many initiatives that were valued in terms of local engagement, but were limited in terms of broader impact. Thus, Keleş (in Weller 2015) has said that “By 2008 we came to the realization that although we were doing a lot of community work, we needed to diversify our work to achieve greater impact” (pp. 245–246). This growing recognition had already led to the organisation, in 2007, of an international academic conference on the movement, held in the UK Parliament’s House of Lords, the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, about which Keleş explained that “it enabled us for the first time to work together in one space as a team for an extended period of time” (in Weller 2015, p. 246). In Keleş’ view, this conference was “one of the watershed moments” for the Society’s development. As Keleş explains, this was partly motivated by:

by our attempt to tell people who we were, and what we were about. We believed then, and most of us continue to believe now, that this a good thing. Part of it was motivated about transparency. So it was, that was if you like, the ‘coming out’ of the movement in the UK in the 2000s.

Meanwhile, local Dialogue Society initiatives had been emerging, and between 2010 and 2011 a number of local groups, including those from Leeds and Southampton, began meeting with the London-based Dialogue Society and each other to share ideas and good practice. They were joined by the Midlands Dialogue Forum. Together with groups in Bristol, Durham, Hull, Leicester, Manchester, Northampton and Oxford, and other groups that had been organised in the south of England, they ultimately came together on the basis that many of their activities thematically overlapped and that resource efficiencies could be gained, with the London Society acting as what might be called an “umbrella” for Dialogue Society branches throughout England.

In relation to what by then became the clear transparency of connection between the Dialogue Society in its various manifestations and Gülen (see Sect. 5.4), Keleş notes that such an approach also informed the creation of what eventually became Voices in Britain⁷⁵ which was the stage in Hizmet’s development to which this author’s previously published work on Hizmet had reached by the time of its publication (Weller 2015). However, the initial origin of Voices was earlier with, for example, the organisation’s logo having been created in 2011 following the start of consultative meetings that took place in 2010–2011 under the name of Voices. A Voices Twitter account was opened in June 2012. Voices became public in a 2015 letter that was sent to the then Prime Minister, the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government, and which referenced it as having been created in 2013.

As already noted earlier in this chapter, in the UK as in many countries, Hizmet started with trying to meet the educational needs of migrant families of Turkish origin, as with the work of the pioneering Axis Educational Trust (which is also now part of Voices) and which was founded in 1994 in support of the provision of supplementary education. In 2006, the Trust sought to continue its work with the founding of the Wisdom School as an independent and non-denominational mixed sex school in Tottenham, north London, at which Keleş taught for a short period until they found a qualified teacher. In 2010 Axis transferred responsibility for the school to a new and specifically dedicated company limited by guarantee and registered charity. As the school grew, the charity purchased a former police training building in Hendon, North London, which opened in September 2014 as the North London Grammar School.⁷⁶

Among other educational initiatives within Voices is the Lighthouse Education Society,⁷⁷ a charity based in south London which, through branches in Welling, Croydon, Peckham and Tooting, is working to enable and empower young people through education, especially via sponsorship of supplementary schools, mentor training, parenting support and educational consultancy. There is also the Amity Educational Foundation,⁷⁸ in north London, which is focused on the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds; and the Spring Educational Society which has branches in Birmingham, Leicester and Northampton.⁷⁹

In support of young people’s development is Mentorwise UK,⁸⁰ a London-based, UK-wide organisation that aims to support disadvantaged teenagers and young adults in building their confidence and improving their life skills, opening them up to a wider range of opportunities and allowing them to explore different life choices in their education and careers, and their personal lives. Mentorwise focuses not just on young people (mentees) but, in addition, aims to support their parents, carers and educators. Also with a role in support of education but with, in addition, a wider remit to contribute to social integration, is the Fellowship Educational Society.⁸¹

In contrast to the other educational and dialogical initiatives outlined above, the names of which do not signal either their “Turkishness” or their “Muslimness”, the Anatolian Muslims Society⁸² clearly articulates its orientation in both its name and its aims. These aims include those of supporting the British Muslim community through cultural and religious work, and the wider society through intercultural events and projects. Its activities include public seminars, vacation camps, trips, weekend schools and relief work. The Society has been a registered charity since 2004 and perhaps unusually for a Hizmet organisation in view of Gülen’s original injunction to focus more on the building of schools rather than of mosques, in 2008, it founded the Mevlana Rumi Mosque and Community Centre⁸³ in Edmonton Green, North London.

The mosque, which was the first mosque in the UK to appoint a female head, was named in honour of the thirteenth-century Anatolian Sufi master Mevlana Rumi. In due course it changed its name to the Mevlana Rumi Mosque (Contemplation and Learning Centre for Community). By making this change, it wanted to place more of a focus on its attempts to reinvigorate and facilitate the implementation of Rumi’s Islamic teachings of love, empathy and engagement rather than on Rumi as an historic individual personality. In functioning as a mosque, the building aims to address the urgent need for quality services and education of the British Muslim community in London. However, it also works as a centre for dialogue, proactively seeking to facilitate grassroots social cohesion, and approximately a thousand people use the Centre’s facilities each week. It is therefore an example of how, via a division of labour among various Hizmet-related organisations, it is possible also to address the more distinctively Turkish and more specifically Muslim needs, although in this instance even this is done in a way that does not only have a narrow communalist focus.

Perhaps even more unusually than the mosque, Voices in Britain has made more visible and transparent one of the historic basic building blocks of Hizmet, namely the sohbets—which are fundamentally concerned with Hizmet religious learning and spiritual activities. In the context of Voices in Britain, the Sohbet Society⁸⁴ has been formed to formalise and make transparent this fundamental Hizmet activity alongside the more “outward-facing” initiatives that are better known to the general public. Sohbet is a Turkish word which means to talk, converse, discuss and engage with one another in a friendly, caring, warm and informal manner. In the context of Hizmet specifically, the word sohbet is used to mean conversing with one another in a study or discussion circle on the big questions of God, purpose, meaning, faith, religion and society. This is pursued through a series of activities including study groups, mentoring, outreach, retreats, excursions and social action. The Sohbet Society’s website explained that its sohbets are categorised by age (including for adults and for teenagers); by gender (for men and women separately, while under development is one for married couples to attend jointly); by profession (e.g. business people, students and other professionals, perhaps teachers or medical staff); by level (including advanced-level sohbets for more studious participants) and by language (currently sohbets are provided in Turkish and in English).

Completing the triad of Hizmet concerns with education, dialogue and the relief of poverty is another member organisation of Voices in Britain, Time to Help,⁸⁵ which is a registered charity founded in 2013, and which has a current main focus on orphan help, refugee help, homelessness and water. Working in relation to human rights matters, including those of Hizmet people who have had to flee from Turkey, is London Advocacy. Also in the UK is the Centre for Hizmet Studies⁸⁶ and the Turkey Institute.⁸⁷

The Centre for Hizmet Studies is, on its website, described as being “founded by a group of individuals who have both researched Hizmet at a Doctoral level and who are personally inspired by Hizmet’s teachings and praxis” and that it aims “to facilitate, as well as present, critical analysis of Hizmet for both academic and popular audiences”. The Turkey Institute describes its work as being supported by benefactors who “include London based business people with a Turkish background some of whom affiliated with the Hizmet movement”. It is based in London and, on its website, describes itself as a “centre of research, analysis and discussion on Turkey” especially for “policy-makers, the media and other relevant stakeholders to enable a more nuanced and thorough understanding” of Turkey.

6 Hizmet in Switzerland

Labour migrationof Turks to Switzerland started in the 1960s and Islam in Switzerland is much more ethnically varied than in Germany. However, when the Turkish Muslim Millî Görüş was established in Germany, a number of Turks in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland joined it. At the same time, others adhered to the mosques and initiatives of the Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği. As in Germany, Suleymancilar and Nurcu communities are also present in Switzerland.

A key interviewee in relation to the development of Hizmet in Switzerland was Ramazan Özgü (see Acknowledgements) who grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, in a family that originated in the labour migration from Turkey. Özgü’s father—who was a community worker—was not active in Hizmet beyond going to sobhets. However, in common with many parents from Turkey who arrived as Gastarbeiter (guest workers) he thought it important to send his children to Hizmet educational initiatives in order for them to improve their life chances. Now a lawyer, Özgü personally benefitted from the Nachhilfezentrum—(supplementary school centres) that were a feature of Hizmet’s early organisation and activity in Switzerland, as in other European countries. While these Nachhilfezentrum originally focused on Turkish children, Özgü notes that “a few years later in the 1990s, there came also many immigrants and many asylum-seekers from the Balkan states, like Albania, Bosnia and the others. And after that, many of these students were also from these countries”. As Özgü explained it, “I was the only one student in the community who could study in law”, which he did at the University of Zurich before going on to do a master’s at the Catholic, Donau-Universität in Krems, close to Vienna, Austria.

In time, Özgü became active in Hizmet and now, as he says, “I am responsible for dialogue activities in Hizmet and I am also responsible for law questions and for asylum-seekers and I am also active in the Swiss media, giving interviews”. In addition, and interestingly, with regard to the relationship between the formal and informal aspects of leadership within Hizmet, he explains that “I am also part of this informal network that we call abis, and I have a region in the vicinity of Zurich of which I am the co-ordinator. I am part of this community there and I am the so-called abi of this region and also active in this informal part of Hizmet”. That Özgü has roles in both the formal and the informal parts of Hizmet is important in terms of understanding the development of Hizmet in Switzerland, as in other countries. In relation to the origins of Hizmet in Switzerland, as Özgü explains with regard to the workers who had arrived from Turkey, “The most important thing about Hizmet in Switzerland” is that “It was a movement founded by workers in Switzerland” and that “They had an informal network here, you know these sobhets. These were all informal. They didn’t have any formal organizations here”. Overall, they were “just workers who came together and read the books from Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen, and they also watched his preaching”.

Unlike in Germany and the Netherlands, Gülen himself was never in Switzerland, although as Özgü noted that there were indirect connections: “There were these abis connected with him, but I don’t think they were directly connected to him”. In this early period of Hizmet development in Switzerland, the links to Turkey in many ways went primarily through Germany because Hizmet in Germany had more of a “direct connection to Turkey”. According to Özgü, the first formally established Hizmet organisation in Switzerland was set up in 1992 and was called the Hüdavendigar Vakfi Foundation. In 1994 the name was changed to the German name: Stiftung SERA—Stiftung für Erziehung, Ausbildung und Integration (or, Foundation for Education, Training and Integration). This remains active today⁸⁸ and according to Özgü “has many projects with the state here in Switzerland”, especially in the Canton of Zurich. One of these was the EKOL: Bildungszentrum für Nachhilfeunterricht und Gymnasiumvorbereitung (or, Educational Centre for Tutoring and High School Preparation)⁸⁹ that opened in 2003. Another was the private secondary SERA Schule (or, SERAschool), opened in 2009. Both of these worked successfully until the impact of July 2016 meant that they had to close because significant numbers of parents, anxious about the potential implications of themselves and/or their children being associated with Hizmet, withdrew their children. As commented on by Tekalan, who had visited Switzerland in 1981–1982, “This is very new: before everyone wanted to send their children to these schools”.

Özgü explains that while, in the early days, Hizmet was concentrated in Zurich, SERA was also active in Torgau, in Bern, in Argau and in the other Cantons. Nevertheless, until around 2002–2004 “the people from the other Cantons came to Zurich” for meetings and for inspiration and organisation. Then, “After that, in many other Cantons they also founded their own associations and foundations. In Basel there were two associations, in Bern also two associations, also in Lausanne and in Geneva, there were also two associations”. In terms of links between Hizmet initiatives, contact with Zurich became gradually more informal. As Özgü explained it, “just one person came now to this ‘main meeting’, and all the other people did their stuff in their own Canton”. In fact, this development was entirely consistent with the Swiss value of Kantönligeist in which each Canton is almost a distinctive nationality. At the same time, Özgü notes that despite their contextual differences, there is a commonality in that they are “all active in inter-religious dialogue”.

At present in Switzerland, despite the existence of these informal linkages, there is no formal umbrella organisation. As Özgü noted, “In Switzerland, Swiss law doesn’t say that you have to found an association to come together or make anything together. There are other forms to do that. Also, the associations don’t have to be in a register in Switzerland. Association law is very free, very liberal”. But there is an ongoing connection through the Interessengemeinschaft für Universelle Werte (IGUW), or Consortium for Universal Values, founded in 2017.

7 Hizmet in France

The volume of Turkish labour migration to France was not as great as it was in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium and, overall, the Muslim presence in France has a much more “Arabic” than “Turkic” public profile. Arising from this there have been corresponding differences in relation to the development of Hizmet in France. On this, a key interviewee was Asen Erkinbekov (see Acknowledgements), originally from Kyrgyzstan and who, at the time of the interview in November 2019, had been living in France for around fifteen years, having originally arrived there to undertake his master’s and doctoral studies. He has worked in the Plateforme de Paris,⁹⁰ founded in 2005, which Erkinbekov described as “an organization which does inter-cultural and inter-faithdialogue programmes in France”. These programmes include the Trophée du Vivre Ensemble (or the Living Together Trophy), which was created in 2014 and aims to reward and support initiatives that promote living together, social cohesion, cultural mix and inter-generational mix within four main fields, namely Technology and Media; Human rights, Plural identities, Civil liberties; Education, Democracy, Citizenship; Religion and Society.

With regard to Hizmet’s origins in France, Toğuşlu’s (2015) book chapter on Hizmet in France explores what it calls “the negotiation of multiple identities in a secular context”, while Demir’s (2012) book chapter traces what he identifies as “the implementation strategies and competition logics” of Hizmet in France (and, comparatively, in Germany too); and most recently, Bayram Balcı (2018) locates Hizmet in France within its wider European context. According to Erkinbekov, “the approximate start is that it started with the Turkish immigrants who settled in France, who came here for work” which he dated as being “at the end of the 1970s” and “between the 1970s and 1980s”. In relation to these workers, he explained that “some of them, they already had a connection with the Hizmet movement in Turkey, so when they came here they wanted to start Hizmet meetings in France”, with Erkinbekov dating the start of more organised Hizmet activities in France as being “at the end of the 1980s, I think”.

As with Germany and the Netherlands, Gülen visited France and met with Hizmet people there, with Erkinbekov referencing both “a short trip” taking place “at the end of the 80s” that included visits to Strasbourg and Paris, and then a first proper visit “in 1992 or 1991, I think”. Initially in Strasbourg and Paris, as in other European countries, there had been what Erkinbekov described as “other associations which were not for the inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue but they were, as one says in Turkish, dershane centres for giving classes for children”. According to Erkinbekov, the first association that was created by Hizmet and which included the word dialogue in its name was started in Strasbourg under the name of Center Dialogue. As Erkinbekov stresses, “it was aimed not just for inter-faithdialogue, but it was aimed towards children, giving lessons and so on”. In addition, as Erkinbekov explained, Strasbourg was particularly important for the initial development of Hizmet in France “because Strasbourg is very close to Germany, and it was in Germany before in France that Hizmet started”. In time, other initiatives similar to those in other countries also emerged such as the business association, Fédérations d’Entrepreneurs et de Dirigeants de France (or Federations of Entrepreneurs and Directors of France),⁹¹ founded in Paris in 2004.

The Platforme de Paris was inspired by, and emerged out of, the Abant Platform conference that took place in Paris in 2005. Given the original Abant Platform’s (see Sect. 2.3) focus on wider social issues, this is another example of how, in each European country where Hizmet has developed, there has been a reflection of, and adaptation to, distinctive characteristics of that country in terms, especially, of the relationship between religion, state and society. Toğuşlu, who now lives and works in Belgium, first lived in France when he came to Europe to study for his doctorate. Having also worked in Belgium, he observed in relation to the two countries that “they are very different, especially Belgium is a different country, and France has its own way of doing politics, education, whatever you think of: they have their own unique societal experience or model, especially this laicité. It’s very, very present”.

Erkinbekov cites the French notion of laïcité as being “why I think that at the beginning the Platforme de Paris was built as an inter-cultural more than an inter-faith platform. And in most of the actions that Platforme de Paris took, there was inter-culturaldialogue, an inter-cultural platform”. In other words, the initial emphasis was more on culture than on religion, again as in contrast to the Netherlands where the early focus was primarily on Islam and dialogue. Nevertheless, Erkinbekov wanted to underline that although it did have a cultural emphasis, “the Platforme de Paris was always in dialogue with the other dialogue organizations based on the faiths—with inter-faith programmes, with dialogues, and the volunteers of Platforme de Paris were in dialogue and organised programmes with other faith-based organizations”. Indeed, Toğuşlu’s reported experience chimes with this since, at least in contrast to the Turkey from which he had come to study in France, Toğuşlu said that he gained what he called “another picture of the movement”, in which “for example, the dialogue and especially the inter-faithdialogue was extended”. Indeed, through that he became involved in, and later on began to organise, such dialogues, including especially with a Muslim-Christian group in Paris.

One of the things highlighted by Erkinbekov is that a generational change has more recently been taking place in the Plateforme de Paris. Nihat Sarier had been the President for a decade but “now the others, I would say the young generation of the Hizmet movement in France” are coming through in what Erkinbekov describes as “a transition of the administrative staff”. This change in individual leaders was, however, also part of a wider development which, as Erkinbekov explained, “We tried to make very heterogenous”. Thus, for example, the bureau of the Platforme de Paris historically had three office-holders—a President, and Treasurer and Secretary. In contrast to that, Erkinbekov explained that, in the future, “So, we want that there will be at least ten persons in the administration staff of the association, and in every association”. At the same time, however, while broadening involvements, Erkinbekov noted that although the Platforme had some part-time staff which supported the volunteers and that “I think they are looking for recruiting a full-time staff”.

In many ways, like London in the UK, Paris is very much a centralised “magnet” for the whole of France. In relation to Hizmet, Erkinbekov explained that the way in which this had historically worked was that “The Platforme de Paris had a partnership with the other Hizmet associations in other cities”. Concretely this means that “sometimes the volunteers or administrative staff of the Platforme de Paris have shared in an event or organization with the other Hizmet associations in the other cities” or they were offering what Erkinbekov called “a consulting service” to other associations. This was, therefore, a more informal type of networking than something like the more federal approach like Fedactio in Belgium, being perhaps more akin to the relationship that existed between the Dialogue Society in London and other branches and initiatives of the Dialogue Society in other UK locations prior to the emergence of Voices.

As in Switzerland where the predominantly Cantonal approach to organising was supplemented by an all Swiss Confederation assembly of Hizmet people, it would appear that, also in France, the environment after July 2016 provided an impetus towards the creation of a new all-France association called Cohèsions. This was established, as Erkinbekov explained, through:

All the Hizmets are sitting together, all the grassroots of Hizmet, all the sympathisers of the Hizmet movement, they came together and they worked on the new Association which will be the umbrella of the Hizmet movement in France. It was a lot of work. We worked two years on this Association and all the sympathisers of the Hizmet movement participated in a General Assembly of this Association. So, there was four times in two years a General Assembly of all the Hizmet movement participants and they elected an administrative staff of the Association.

Erkinbekov furthermore explained of this that “now we are working on the partnership agreement between all of the Associations” and that in the process of that “We are finding Hizmet sympathisers all over France”. As an important difference to Voices in the UK is that Erkinbekov notes that Cohèsions aspires to be “the one and only Association which can take care of and report for the Hizmet movement in France”.

8 Hizmet in Spain

The history, existence and work of Hizmet in the Iberian Peninsula is something about which there have been virtually no scholarly publications in English or indeed in any other language. It is therefore something about which few people outside the Spanish-speaking world know. This is partly because Spain was not originally a country for any significant Turkish labour migration. Indeed, Islam in Spain has had no particularly dominant religio-ethnic group, which perhaps contributed to the conditions that allowed for the comparatively early foundation in Spain of an organisation that sought to represent the broad range of Muslims in negotiations with the Spanish state. This is the Commission Islamico Espana (Comisión Islámica de España⁹² (Spanish Islamic Commission) which brokered one of the earliest European governmental formal recognitions of Islam through an Acuerdo de Cooperacíon del Estado Español con las Comisíon islamica de España (or, Co-Operation Agreement of the Spanish State with the Islamic Commission of Spain), signed in 1992, in the context of which certain rights were accorded to Muslims in Spain (Antes 1994).

The interviewee Temirkhon Temirzoda (see Acknowledgements) is a leading Hizmet figure in Spain, who himself originated from the city of Khujand (during the Soviet period known as Leninbad) in northern Tajikistan where he had been a teacher at a high school founded in 1997 by Yusuf Kemal Erimez, a businessman and close friend of Gülen. However, with regard to his name, as interviewee Termijón Termizoda Naziri, from Spain explains it, “here in Spain because of the pronunciation of the names, I just tell Temir Naziri, so this is the short form and I think the easiest form of pronouncing my name so everyone knows me as, like, Temir Naziri in Spain”. Naziri first arrived in Spain in 2007 as one of the first students coming to Europe as part of Erasmus Mundus External Co-operation Window (EMECW) programme, to undertake his master’s study, and was interviewed in September 2019.

His initial connections with Hizmet in Spain were with the Spanish-Turkish Association. According to Naziri, this had been founded in 1996 by “Turkish and Spanish citizens. They were businessmen, some of them were academicians” and also by “two or three persons were in Spanish and Turkish and Turkish and Spanish mixed marriages”. As Naziri explained it, this Association was formed “to promote Spanish-Turkish cooperation on education, business area, and culture of course, cultural spheres”. However, Naziri also noted “there was not so much activity going on, except some journeys and some groups that were coming from Turkey” which contrasts with the development of Hizmet in most other European countries where one of the typically organised activities was that of taking groups of people to Turkey.

While a student in the late 2000s, Naziri began voluntary work with the Asociación Hispano Turca, moving to a professional engagement in 2011. In 2013, he was involved in founding the Arco Forum Association,⁹³ also a non-profit organisation. He recalls that it had started in around 2010 or 2011, but under the name of Casa Turca⁹⁴ (or, Turkish House) because, as Naziri explained:

In Spain the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some years ago, started to establish different institutions, public institutions and their names are like, Casa Arabe, Casa Sefarad (for Sephardic Jews), Casa Africa, Casa America, and all these institutions are public Spanish institutions, linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they wanted to, like, link with all those countries and so it was, like, popular to have “Casa”.

In connection with this, Naziri explained that they originally sought a connection with Casa Árabe. However, in Casa Árabe’s view Turkey did not fall within its definition, while Casa Asia said that, although Iran was within their association, Turkey was more like Europe, at which point Naziri says, “I said, well, OK, we are founding our Casa Turca. So that was how it emerged and it was, like, a good decision in terms of the mark, in terms of the label and getting to be known very fast in Turkish and Spanish society”. On its website Casa Turca shows the activities that it has been working on over the years which include Turkish classes, Turkish cuisine, Turkish cinema, Turkish art. However, in his 2019 interview Naziri commented that “But now because of all the things that have been happening we have not been so active. Energetic, yes, but because all that has happened, it is economically not possible”. In relation to this Naziri went on to explain that until around 2012 they had around a dozen people working there as volunteers, of which “Most of them were Hizmet people, but interestingly enough it was heterogenous: Spanish, I am Tajik, Turkish, some Russian, some even Turkmen. Well, Turks with Kurdish backgrounds, Turkish citizens, like, it was really different”.

Regardless of this diversity challenge, Naziri explained that a need was identified also to focus more on Spain itself, not with the idea of being more explicit about Hizmet for the sake of Hizmet’s own profile but “Rather to get to know some ideas about, you know, Fethullah Gülen, explaining about the values that he teaches, taking that into the Spanish society, mostly on the inter-religious basis, inter-religious dialogue sphere”. As explained by Naziri this led, in 2013, to “me and two other guys founding the Arco Forum”, of which Naziri was initially Secretary General and is now President. Naziri explained that a lot of thought and debate went into what to call this new organisation and that he, in particular, had been against giving it a specifically Turkish-related name. Rather, “We wanted to put a name which would be very good and universal, like, familiar to all the people. And so, Arco, you know, it’s an arc, and it symbolises a bridge between two different separate things. And it comes from Armonía (Harmony), Arte (Arte), Convivencia (ElArte de laConvivencia)”.

Naziri recounts that up until around 2016 there were perhaps only around fifty Hizmet people in Spain, so their original plans related to that kind of human resource and capacity. However, although their economic capacities have become even more constricted since July 2016 in Turkey, through the arrival of asylum-seekers, refugees and other migrants from Turkey they number around 300 people. As a result of this, Casa Turka has been changing its focus such that, while it still provides Turkish language and cuisine classes (with, e.g., a Turkish asylum-seeker becoming the teacher for this), the asylum-seekers are also engaging in Ashura, the Noah’s pudding, and many inter-faith activities.

In terms of educational initiatives in Spain there is Pangea, which focuses on promoting Mathematics among school children by organising contests or competitions. This was initiated around a decade ago by Hizmet participants from Germany, and since then it has spread through different European countries. Hizmet volunteers coming especially from Germany have taken a major role in this initiative in which over one hundred thousand students from all the Spanish provinces participated. Indeed, Naziri explained that for over a decade many male and female Hizmet volunteers came from Germany to study in Spain, as “dynamic young people who are Europeans (German Turks), know the language and wishing to contribute professionally and voluntarily in many activities”. A minority of these returned to Germany, but a majority are still living and working and studying in Spain, in relation to whom Naziri says, “My preoccupation is somehow to engage them, if it is possible in our institutions”. However, he also comments that is “something very hard for now, even if we have been granted some EU Commission Projects that promise some financial stability for our organization” because “Germany can offer them other great jobs with bigger salary than in Spain”. At the same time, although economically there may be better economic opportunities in Germany, Naziri notes that:

Many Turks no matter whether they are from Hizmet or not, do not like Spain, but love it! They love it. You know, it’s a good place to live. But I would say, normally, it is my case, when you know the language, when you learn the language, you don’t feel yourself like a stranger or physically the aspect is more or less Mediterranean. And Spain is quite a good country, it’s not a racist country, it’s an open country. In Spanish classes when you learn there are many phrases: amable (friendly, kind, nice). Yeah, you feel it: it is a polite society, you could say. It is a society that embraces you. It is not racist.

9 Hizmet in Italy

Relatively little has been published in English or, indeed, in other languages concerning Hizmet in Italy, with the exception of the Luca Ozzano’s (2018), “From the ‘New Rome’ to the Old One: the Gülen Movement in Italy”. In Latif Erdoğan’s (1995) biography of Gülen known in English as My Small World, no date is given for when Fethullah Gülen first visited Europe. However, anonymous Hizmet participant in Italy HE2 (see Acknowledgements) notes that this book included a picture of which he says that “when I moved to Italy, I looked again at this book when I was searching for something and I looked at that picture, and I realised that that picture was taken in Rome, actually. So, it is in front of the Roman Forum” and that “in the early 1990s, I don’t know the reason … he just came to Rome”.

In sharing his perspective on the development of Hizmet in Italy, this interviewee explained that “there are some different narratives about it”, although it is thought that Hizmet people first came to Italy in 1994, supported by scholarships from Turkish foundations, in order to undertake graduate studies in some Italian universities. However, after some months they ran into a number of difficulties, many of which were said to be related to the fact that they did not know Italian, and in the light of which they decided to move to Modena where there was a small pre-existing Turkish diaspora. Between then and 1997 it is not clear what happened, but in 1997 it is documented that Abdhullah Aymaz visited Rome as part of a wider Hizmet-related trip that also included a visit to Austria. This was in a broader context in which Hizmet in Turkey had, via the representative of the Apostolic Nunciature in Istanbul, established some links with the Catholic Church and the Vatican. The Rome visit included both the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, in the context of which discussions took place that led to the initiation of a student exchange.

Nevertheless, as in a number of other European countries, this early initiative did not result in a straight line to later developments, with HE2 explaining that “so far as I understand it, there was a sort of rupture”, surmising that this may have been linked to project funding. As again in other European examples, it was sometimes the case that “the benefactors were not able to support any more”. But in 2002–2003 it appears that a Hizmet person with good interpersonal skills and good links with other parts of Europe relocated from Austria to Italy; assumed the role there of a Hizmet grassroots facilitator and operated in a way that is illuminating also of other Hizmet developmental contexts in Europe. As explained by HE2:

This guy was a kind of facilitator, with good contacts, and good skills for fundraising in relationship with businessmen and with others who had better conditions in other parts of Europe. Sometimes things work better through friendships: so, if you live in a country and you are responsible for some Hizmet institutions and in the next country you have a classmate with more resources, your classmate, just being classmates and good friends will find you more contacts.

By the time Pope John Paul II had received Gülen in a “private audience”, as HE2 explained it, “this guy came and said, ‘Rome is such an important city’ ” and in the light of that papal audience he raised the question of why there was no organised Hizmet activity in Rome. Therefore, the Istituto Tevere,⁹⁵ based in Rome, was founded in 2007. From its beginning, it resolved that it should not be a Turkish cultural centre. Rather, HE2 explains that “It was all focused on inter-religious and inter-culturaldialogue, usually focusing on ‘giving voice’ to different partners in inter-faithdialogue, like Bahá’ís and Ahmadiyah too, we always invite them to talk and engage”. As an example of this, HE2 shared that:

Last October was an interesting day. It was Eid Al-Adha, it was the Feast of St. Francis, and it was also Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur was challenging because of fasting and being at home all day. But there was a Progressive lady who said I am fasting but I can come. In this case we had some food, so in return I sat with this woman and said I was present, I haven’t had any water.

In relation to the opportunities and challenges of inter-faithdialogue HE2 argued that it is important that such dialogue is engaged with “Not just superficially, we love each other, we believe in the same God, yippee, that’s nice, but a little bit harder”, citing as one example the Istituto Tevere’s trailblazing adoption in Rome—via contacts in Cambridge, UK—of scriptural reasoning.⁹⁶

Outside of Rome, prior to the foundation of the Istituto Tevere there had been around seven other Hizmet-related initiatives, including in Milan and Modena. As in many other European countries, these had initially aimed to reach out to the children of Turkish immigrants through after-schooling and similar educational initiatives. At the time of his interview, HE2 reported that, nationally, in Italy, “there are three associations”. Among those that emerged after the foundation of the Istituto Tevere was one in Venice. Another is Meridiano, which might be described as a kind of “retreat house”, and for which the buildings were purchased cheaply and renovated. This has been a focus for ten Catholic families (especially involving people from the lay Franciscan community) and ten Muslim families who (sometimes in Assisi and sometimes at this place) “do everything together, they cook together, they eat together. Every group reads their own readings, the Qur’an for Muslims etc. and in some common time they share their readings – we learned this or that”.

10 Hizmet in Denmark

In relation to Hizmet in Denmark, Jacobsen (2012) has a book-length treatment which examines the development of Hizmet in the country, with particular reference to the opportunities that it appears to open up for middle-class people of Turkish background there. There is also a master’s dissertation by Ibrahim (2016) which is a case study of a Hizmet school in Denmark.

In the context of Scandinavia as a whole, it was only Denmark where the research project underlying this book and its complementary volume conducted its own primary research. According to interviewee Mustafa Gezen (see Acknowledgements) from Denmark, “The Hizmet history in Denmark began approximately in the late 1980s when a group of first and second generation young and middle-aged people, descending from Turkey, initiated activities inspired from listening to Gülen’s audio recordings and video recordings”. Gezen notes that, in contrast to a number of other countries, “no-one came from Turkey to Denmark from Hizmet to initiate activities, it was locally initiated” and that “I think that’s unique for Denmark. They found Gülen before anyone took the hijrah, using the classical term, or decided to move to Denmark”. Referring to the oral history tradition of this early period, Gezen went on to explain that:

Apparently, from what we have heard, one or two people went to Turkey, found those videos and this little group of ten or eleven people were in Denmark and were in search of finding, you could call it, a cemaat that they could associate themselves with and help with some of the issues they were experiencing with their kids and with the new country they were in. So, they started listening to Gülen.

As Gezen comments of these pioneers, “Many of these people are great inspiration to many of the people in the Hizmet movement today, because they managed to establish many initiatives while working in different avenues in society”. For example, “from the videos they were inspired to establish a school based on science and good manners. They also started looking into finding someone to make contact with in Turkey, because they were aware that people were listening to Gülen and were establishing schools in Turkey”. In due course “Someone did come and started living in Denmark, and the idea about opening a school took even more form”, with Hayskolen⁹⁷ being established in Copenhagen 1993 (Ibrahim 2016), and Gezen himself graduating from this school in 1996 as part of the first class to graduate.

In 2002, the Dialog Forum was founded by a small number of university graduates and students who, as Gezen says, “wanted to engage in purposeful dialogue between people in the Danish society with different cultural and religious backgrounds”. Its core values were inspired from the 1997 dialogue initiatives by Gülen in Istanbul, and especially the dialogue dinners organised by the Journalists and Writers’ Foundation and, “So, some of the people who established this in Denmark had an initial inspiration from there”. As in the Netherlands, explicitly inter-religious dialogue was a big part of Hizmet’s activity in Denmark from its beginnings:

So what Dialog Forum did in 2002 was to establish relations with people of faith, whom with common ideas could be shared. It started with a couple of activities and getting in touch with the religious groups, such as the Jewish community and the Christian community. The Christian community was of course the largest one in Denmark. So, it was an inter-religious start with a Jewish, Christian and Muslim dialogue.

At the same time, today, many of Hizmet’s newer projects in Denmark have a much broader, societal focus. Alongside the more traditional kind of business-related associations that one can also find in other countries, such as DATİFED, the Danish Turkish Business Federation⁹⁸ founded in 2011, these newer initiatives include Mit Studium which Gezen says is “a university project focusing on helping young students who feel themselves lonely and anxious”. There is also Mentor X that Gezen says “is supporting young girls and young boys in getting in touch with the Danish society, like going to the theatre, going to the cinema, going to the opera maybe, and going to museums, and in this way maybe trying to educate them within the Danish context”.

11 Hizmet in Some Other European Countries

The research project underlying this book and its complementary volume did not conduct its own primary research in the European countries discussed within this section. Further work needs to be done to address both primary research and literature gaps on Hizmet in a number of European countries, especially in relation to the Western Balkans where there is a significant historical Turkish-related heritage, but also in relation to emergent groups in Central and Eastern European countries where there are only very small populations of Turkish origins, but where Hizmet is also present and active.

In Sweden, as in a number of other European countries, in 2011 a business association was founded called SWETURK (Swedish-Turkish Business Network).⁹⁹ Today perhaps the highest-profile Hizmet organisation in Sweden, and that has one of the highest profiles in Europe, is the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF)¹⁰⁰ which states on its website that it is:

A non-profit organization set up by a group of journalists who have been forced to live in self-exile in Sweden against the background of a massive crackdown on press freedom in Turkey, where almost 300 journalists have been jailed, and close to 200 media outlets have been shuttered by a series of arbitrary decisions taken by the Turkish authorities.

In this regard it is:

An advocacy organization that promotes the rule of law, democracy, fundamental rights and freedoms with a special focus on Turkey, a country with eighty million citizens that is experiencing a dramatic decline in its parliamentary democracy under its autocratic leadership.

Examples of its work include a report on the post-2016 pressures on Hizmet people in Sweden (Stockholm Center for Freedom 2018) as well as a similar report on Norway (Stockholm Center for Freedom 2017).

Although the research project for this book did not conduct interviews in Norway, in the interview held with Alasag from the Netherlands, he noted of Gülen’s friend Başaran that he “was also travelling a lot in the whole of Europe” and, as one example of this, Alasag referred to Başaran’s visit to see friends in Oslo, while Alasag himself also recalls visiting Oslo in 1992. By that time, Alasag reports that Hizmet people had a very nice mosque and that people from the mosque told him that “they had, in the past, a very small, dirty place for worship, but an imam came from Rotterdam and preached and they got motivated and they bought this place”. Similarly, to what has been noted in other countries, there was a business association called NOTURK (Norwegian-Turkish Chamber of Commerce), founded in 2007. From a position critical to Hizmet in Norway as being engaged in what it calls a “neo-Ottoman conquest” is a master’s thesis by Berg (2012). By the time of Berg’s thesis, Hizmet had initiatives in Oslo, Drammen, Trondheim and Stavanger.

In relation to the Republic of Ireland, the Turkish-Irish Education and Cultural Society¹⁰¹ was founded in 2004 by a group of volunteers comprising of businesspeople, academicians and students. A number of publications by Lacey (2009, 2010, 2011) have explored Hizmet’s distinctive role in this as well as (see Sect. 3.5) in Northern Ireland. Also as noted in Sect. 3.11, there is now a new Hizmet-related organisation on the island of Ireland, founded in 2021 as a limited company,¹⁰² based in Dublin, and known more widely as Eire Dialogue.¹⁰³

In Austria, Frieda, the Institut für Dialog (or Institute for Dialogue),¹⁰⁴ was founded in 2002 and is based in Vienna. Frieda’s activities have included seminars, roundtables, cultural discussion evenings, study trips, excursions, dialogue workshops, concerts and art exhibitions.

With regard to other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Bekir Çinar’s (2015) book chapter has a brief discussion of Romania; in relation to the Czech Republic, the Mozaiky O.S Platform Dialog (or Mosaic Dialogue Platform)¹⁰⁵ was founded in 2005 and is based in Prague; in Hungary, the Dialógus Platform Egyesület (or Dialogue Platform Association)¹⁰⁶ was founded in 2005 and is based in Budapest; in Poland, the Dunaj Instytut Dialogu (or Danube Institute of Dialogue)¹⁰⁷ is based in Warsaw; in Slovakia, Bystra Education is based in Bratislava; while in Slovenia, there is the Društvo Meldkurtuni (or Meldkurtuni Association).

With regard to the Western Balkans, which has a strong Turkic heritage, according to Kerem Öktem (2010), at time of his writing there were “ten such colleges with several thousand students”. Focusing on educational institutions alone, in relation to Albania, Agai’s (2008) previously mentioned book discusses Hizmet educational initiatives there, as does Bekir Çinar’s (2015) later book chapter, while the anti-Hizmet authors Holton and Lopez (2015, pp. 67–68) highlight two universities in Tirana, Albania, as having been linked with Hizmet, namely Beder University College¹⁰⁸ that was opened in 2011, and Epoka University,¹⁰⁹ which was designated as a University in 2012, and which the present author visited in the same year. Bekir Çinar’s (2015) book chapter referred to above also briefly discusses Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, based in Sarajevo, there is the International Burç University,¹¹⁰ founded in 2008. A book chapter by Mehmeti (2012) discusses Hizmet educational initiatives in Kosovo.

Finally, in other parts of Europe, in Portugal, the Intercultural Dialogue Platform of Portugal,¹¹¹ which is part of the Associação de Amizado Luso-Turca (or Portuguese-Turkish Friendship Association),¹¹² was founded in 2008 and is based in Lisbon.