1 Wounded Exile

With regard to Gülen’s relationship with the USA where he now lives, Öztürk very succinctly summarised this as being: “His first visit to the US was in 1992; then in 1997; in 1999 third time which was the last one, never to go back again.” Gülen is today in the USA as what might be described as a ‘wounded exile.’ In terms of the iterative impact of Gülen’s time in the USA on his life and teaching, Kurucan divides Gülen’s life in the USA into two parts. The first part, he says, was “from 1999 to 2013 when things really started going bad in Turkey.” As Haylamaz explained those first years: “Eighteen years ago (1999): those are the times when Hojaefendi had to come to the US because of this extreme persecution and possible prosecution he was going to have by the regime of the time in Turkey. Again, similar charges of treason and toppling down the regime were being brought against him.” In terms of Gülen’s response at that time:

He wrote in one of his articles at that time (in Sukutun Cigliklari), that God did not give us the claws of a beast or the teeth of a lion so that we can bite. So, we really don’t have that. In the same book in which this article appears, he says, “In spite of so many lies, fabrications, and devilish schemes, I turn to myself and say, ‘You have assumed trouble as your healing from the beginning; then what is this protest for? The one with teeth will certainly bite, and the one with claws will rip through; no one can change this as long as those who consider the truth to be with the powerful continue to exist. Be tolerant to everyone.’ I bury my cries inside and pronounce my feelings with silent woes.”

Overall, as Haylamaz put it of Gülen: “He preferred to keep quiet and silent, not to widen the rift between us and other people.” With regard to the broader ways in which Gülen’s time in the USA has interacted with the development of his thinking and teaching, Ergene explained that: “I believe it has given him a much wider perspective. Even us, we probably travelled more than he did and I know how much we have changed, and I am sure that his vision, his perspective has become much wider since he moved to the west, to the US.” Indeed, as Gülen himself put it during a 2000 interview with Hakan Yavuz (2003):

We all change, don’t we? …By visiting the States and many other European countries, I realized the virtues and the role of religion in these societies. Islam flourishes in Europe and Islam flourishes in Europe and America much better than in many Muslim countries. This means freedom and the rule of law are necessary for personal Islam. (p. 45).

And Ergene summarised it, “His experience here, I believe, has widened his perspective on the way he understands the human and the nature.” Kurucan pointed that this contrasts with “the way ‘Islamists’ in Turkey, and in the rest of the Muslim world, understand the United States. It is important to understand this, for Gülen is coming from such a conservative environment.” As Ergene explained this, “The United States, for those, you know ‘Islamist’ Muslims, who are scholars in the schools of theology, who are being raised in those Imam Hatip high schools, or from those madrassahs, America, US, is always, the ‘ultimate other’.” Of course, there are sensitive political and international issues in the Middle East, especially with regard to Israel and the Palestinians about which all Muslims feel strongly, but:

A lot of people are ignorant of what America stands for, what America is – they don’t know it….You can’t understand America while staying in the Middle East. And when you look into the streets of the Muslim lands, there’s still that very extremist element of understanding the world because this is how they define it: ‘us’ and the ‘other’ concept. It’s a part of that Muslim identity, unfortunately, that radical extremist elements are there always. It’s a huge change when they go back to their Muslim countries, where this rhetoric is so dominant and alive. It’s almost impossible not to be a part of that rhetoric: those radical elements of discourse, in the neighbourhood, in the streets of the Muslim countries are really alive.

In summary, Ergene notes that “Religion is a dominant part of the Muslim society, and when this form of radicalism comes in the dress of Islamic practice it is hard to escape from it.” But, in line with Gülen’s taboo-breaking discourse and actions as discussed in Sect. 3.6, as Ergene noted:

Even before he moved to the West, Gülen never had this ideology of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ understanding, he never had that philosophy, even before he came to the US. But still, living here, being a part of this country, living here for almost twenty years now, I am pretty much sure, meant that he certainly had expanded his visions.

Of course, in the light of what happened to Hizmet in Turkey and across the world since July 2016, it could in principle be possible that either now or in the future, Gülen and/or Hizmet could, through reaction to the negative impact of their experiences, find themselves being drawn into the absolute ‘othering’ of the ruling authorities in Turkey. As Tekalan summarised the general situation and how it impinged on a wide range of people in Turkey:

They confiscated properties of the people, banned going to other countries. Those people, academicians, businessmen, prosecutors, judges, doctors, who are outside the country (Turkey) try to find out some works such as Uber, pizza delivery. During this situation, of course, we try to develop ourselves in front of the difficulties of life, and also, we develop our beliefs in terms of the Qur’an, in terms of Islam, international human values also. There are so many dramatic cases, in jails, in the country, outside the country. Everybody tries to deal with these difficulties sometimes alone, sometimes all together.

Ergene provides some personal texture to this broader picture from his own individual experience which he explained in the following way:

After like ten months after the coup, I had to hide out in Turkey and in one apartment building where I was staying, the police raided the apartment. Thankfully they did not enter the flat I was in. But two storeys above they actually pushed a friend of ours out of the balcony to fall and die. I saw it with my own eyes. And I had to flee through the river, through walking in the forest into Greece, where I had to stay in the jail with PKK terrorists who said, ‘You guys are suffering a lot, but you are not doing anything about it. We cannot be any more patient in the face of what you are facing. This is too much; we will do something on your behalf!’ The PKK terrorists, their main ideology, you know, is violent Marxism. They are very fond of marching in the street, protesting and chanting, you know, and they say ‘Why are you not doing this?’ and I said ‘Hojaefendi is not allowing us to do this, that’s not in our nature anymore. We cannot do it, it’s not because we want it, we just cannot do it. It’s not with us anymore.’

And the following series of testimonies from anonymous asylum-seekers give some insight into the sudden and profound nature of the shock experienced in relation to their previously ‘normal’ daily lives. As AS3 explained it:

We were fired from our jobs. My wife was working in the state hospital, she was a nurse. But one week after the coup they fired my wife and our school was closed. And we couldn’t find any work to do in Turkey. Before that coup, we had a good life, you know. I have daughters, they were going to school, I was going to school, we were living normally. I was not a very rich man, but not a poor man also. We had some savings. I had a flat and a car. I could go to my job and come home. It was a good life for us, but suddenly everything was finished and we were shocked. We couldn’t find any job, we couldn’t earn any money.

In the light of such experiences, as for some many others, AS3 and his wife AS4 had to weigh up the options still available to them, and:

We waited for two years after the army putch. Our life changed a lot and two years we waited and nothing changed and it went worse and worse. So for us, and especially for our children, we came here. It was difficult to make this decision because we had to take very dangerous ways. Our passports had been confiscated so we could not go in legal ways, in illegal ways we came here, through Greece and in a boat.

There were eight people in their boat, and AS4 said “It was dangerous, and this decision was very hard for our families because it is very hard to send us like this – because of the grandchildren, they thought, it’s very dangerous.” But in summary she said “So we are here now” and he said “We have a new life. We will see how it goes.” Another asylum-seeker, AS2, said of Hizmet asylum-seekers in Switzerland that there were “approximately one hundred and thirty families.” Of his own situation, he went on to explain that “In Turkey I was a teacher. I was a Deputy Manager in a Hizmet high school. I had been working there for about fourteen or fifteen years in a Hizmet school,” but that now, he and “A lot of friends here like me, and they are in a dramatic position now,” going on to explain that, “Psychologically they are not in a very good position, and economically, and you know they haven’t got any status here. Most of them came here as a refugee and they are new in a refugee camp.” AS2 elaborated that, after the events of July 2016:

I had been in prison for seven months. I was a teacher and my wife was a nurse. And she had been in jail, fortunately not prison. And if we couldn’t come here, my wife and I would have been put into a prison again. But what could I have made for a coup?! I am only a teacher. I was doing my job and my wife was doing her job. Suddenly, something happened in Turkey – I don’t know what it was, I think it was planned by some powers – maybe made by Erdoğan or the government, or by other things or powers I don’t know. But we were, as a Hizmet people, we were very shocked about that and we have suffered a lot from it.

As AS2 succinctly summarised it: “You are an officer of the state and teaching and everything is normal, and one day later you become a terrorist!”

Before that, most people in Turkey loved us: OK you are doing good, you are educating all of the people, and you are educating my son. We were integrating the people. We always visited the parents, families, we were always in touch with the others. So, they know us. We were communicating with the people. They know our inner life. They know we are innocent. I am sure that they know we are innocent. But they are affected by power – who has power and money and who is politically very powerful.

I know that when the police come, they come at five o’clock in the morning, when my daughters were sleeping, when my wife was sleeping. They came with the guns and there are a lot of, six or seven police, and the kids get shocked. When they came, I said, “Please, sit down and drink my tea. Do you want to have breakfast. You are a citizen of Turkey. We are brothers, what is happening? I am not a terrorist?! Don’t search for terrorists in my home?” I couldn’t be a terrorist, I couldn’t be, even if I wanted to be. How could I do that?!

AS2 also referred to the demonisation in the media that they suffered, explaining that, “All the newspapers were always saying bad things about you. When you open the pages, all the pages are about you” and that through this, “the people in Turkey also began to hate us” and that therefore “We didn’t have a safe life. We had to protect our life, our children, our house also. There was a lot of abuse that someone would come to our home and burn our home.” In the media “They say, you know, ‘Let’s take their children and kill them…We have to hang them on the trees in the streets, all the members of the Hizmet, we have to hang them, we have to kill them!’” As a result of this overall atmosphere, AS2 said:

So, we had no chance but to leave the country. But some of our friends couldn’t leave the country. They had to stay there because coming here means some money. You couldn’t come here by the legal way, because they don’t allow you to go abroad. They take your passport and you can’t go anywhere. So, you have to pay some money to human traffickers. You have to find them, how you can find them. So, it was very difficult because we were never accustomed to that kind of life.

Again, the degree of shock experienced by many is expressed by AS2: “In my life I have never been questioned before by the police. I haven’t done anything like that. I haven’t even had a traffic punishment” but now “My colleagues, most of them are in prison now. I am very lucky, because after about seven months having been imprisoned they take me and charge me and said, ‘You are a terrorist’ and your punishment is to be imprisoned six years and three months.” AS2 was then allowed out of prison pending the decision of a higher court “But by that time, I fled from Turkey,” and since that time “They are looking for me in Turkey. Many times there went to my mother’s home and my brother’s home asking where I am – and my wife:”

But I believe one day it will be OK because everyone understands our innocence. But now, psychologically, the Hizmet movement people are not good because of that position in Turkey. Also, in Europe it is like that. For example, here in Switzerland there is not much pressure from the fans of Erdoğan, I don’t know exactly. But in Belgium, for example, in Germany, there are a lot of fans of Erdoğan and they are doing a lot of bad things. For example, they wanted to try to burn the buildings of Hizmet people in Belgium. So, in Europe also, Hizmet members are also under pressure. So, their psychology is not very good nowadays.

Of what has been both an individual and a collective trauma, AS2 says “We are living in shock now. It is not very easy to deal with the shock. So, our job here, my friends and other friends is to motivate, to tolerate each other, to make each other happy.”

2 Gülen, Hizmet, and Dealing with Trauma

Gülen himself, when interviewed, and looking back at both his previous experience during militarycoups, and the period in Turkey immediately before he became a ‘wounded exile’ in the USA, says of himself that “now when I tell about those times I tell them like stories from history. I don’t feel any grudges or hard feelings.” And Ergene underlined that: “Gülen has never cursed any person because of any persecution to which he has been subjected.” Indeed, with regard to any breach of his personal rights, Ergene reports that Gülen says “Those who persecuted me or did wrong to me or hurt me should know that I forgive them for what they have done,” while in relation to the rights of the wider public, Gülen takes the position that these “will be dealt with by God.” This is because, as Gülen himself elaborated:

This last time was a little different because this time they did not simply target me, they targeted in a very ruthless way, they are targeting thousands of people including women and children – and, you know, they may have sympathy toward me, but I don’t know one in a thousand of those people. They are people who are gathered around this movement, this idea, because they found it reasonable, something worthy – just because of that they are sometimes spending time in jail, sometimes facing torture. Our idea was to bring people other people of all colours, of all backgrounds, all ethnicities, of religions, and the international festival of language and culture demonstrated this idea brilliantly, but even this was considered a crime and people have been put into jail and punished.

Indeed, the process of interviewing anonymous asylum-seekers in Switzerland brought the author of this book to tears, which resonates with what interviewee Abdulkerim (normally known as Kerim) Balcı (see Acknowledgements) from the UK recounted when he told the story that he arranged for a young journalist from UK to go to Greece to do a documentary with Hizmet asylum-seekers there. Very early on, she realised she could not carry it through and came back to the UK and “for about six months she continued dreaming nightmares and so on about the stories she heard from other people, you know, it is not always easy to listen to the trauma.”

For those who directly experience it, trauma can paralyse individuals and groups and overcoming it is by no means straightforward which Balcı acknowledged from his personal experience as a journalist of longstanding when he said that, “I can see that for me it is much more difficult to write now, and I’m not able to write in Turkish at all….I am unable to write in Turkish because when I write Turkish it brings all kinds of those memories.” Therefore, Balcı acknowledges that the reality is “That trauma is there, it most probably will stay there.”

But Balcı is also aware of the danger of such trauma also continuing beyond those whom it directly affected in the instance in that “It might also be inherited. There have been genetic studies that say it really is genetically inherited not only by means of experience and memories and so on, by the third generation.” Indeed, this potential for inter-generational trauma is a matter of clearly emerging and deep concern that came up in a number of interviews. As Naziri put it “it’s easier for the adults, but imagine the children, and mostly the psychology of the kids, the children” and also that, “It is a challenge for all of them, for all of us, I mean, like we have, I think, we have to try to transform it into an opportunity. There is a challenge, there are some issues, but there is an opportunity if one thinks about it, and then hopefully it works.” Arising from it, Balcı developed the idea that despite Hizmet’s long involvement in education in Europe, until now it has not been involved in educating children in Islam as such and noting that in future this might be a necessity.

As Balcı recognised, this is a very complex, multi-layered and by no means straightforward matter, posing the question that: “Whether speaking about trauma in a ‘communitarian’ environment is good or bad – whether it helps overcome the trauma, or whether it revives the trauma again and again.” With regard to this, Balcı had spoken with a British academic expert in post-traumatic syndrome disorder (PTSD) who explained that relevant academic literature indicates that “relating to your trauma together with other people who are also passing through a trauma, it only repeats it and relives it. It is not relief-ing, it is re-living the trauma again and again.” Because of this, Balcı explains that Hizmet has organised a group of young psychotherapists who are “giving a service on Skype to people who are in, particularly, Greece.”

However, when set alongside not only now externally located asylum-seekers, Balcı estimated there were also “some forty thousand people behind bars” in Turkey and therefore the overall available help that is not enough since, as Balcı comments, for these forty thousand, their “trauma is going to be unthinkable when they come out” and therefore “It’s going to be a huge test of us.” Of the people who passed through trauma in Turkey between 2011 and 2017, Balcı said “We are bringing our trauma with us into Europe, into new countries and if the established Hizmet here manages to drag us back to our Hizmet energy, activism and so on, fine. But if we drag them back to our traumatic mindset, we might be doomed, it is a possibility.” And in a particularly sensitive comparison, he said:

I have observed, particularly in the Armeniandiaspora something that the third generation is becoming even more nationalistic. So, I am fearful. Do I hate Erdoğan? Yes, I fight him. And I hope the world is going to get rid of him soon, but I don’t want my daughter to continue hating Erdoğan and Erdoğan’s offsprings and so on, and I don’t want the next generation to be stuck with that hatred. I don’t know how to stop it, but in the Armenian population, I have friends who were exiled from Turkey in 1915, elderly people, you know, and they suffered and the suffering was there, but we were quite good friends. But their sons and daughters, they didn’t want to speak with me. So, if we manage to overcome that, manage to overcome this inheritance, then it is going to be a role model for the rest of humanity, you know. But it needs a lot of courage, it needs a lot of self-restraint, what we are speaking to our younger generation.

Partly because of this, Balcı says that “You know, I am advising people to go and listen to the traumas of non-Hizmet people, but really helps in the sense that you realise that what you have passed through, it’s actually nothing, it’s actually nothing.” In relation to this, he cites Syria, Yemen, Kashmir “and I’m saying OK, we passed through difficult times, we didn’t deserve this maybe. Yes, but our cities were not bombarded. We have had a few cases of rape, or threats of rape and so on, but it was never a mass rape, or a mass torture, never.” Overall, Balcı says it is right to acknowledge that “OK, we are passing through difficult times, but if we exaggerate, if we only think this is the whole of it, this is the whole picture, it becomes the largest thing in life, and overcoming it becomes even more difficult” and therefore “I always advise people to read about the Holocaust, to watch a few movies or documentaries about what the Jews passed through.” Consistent with this, Balcı also organised Hizmet youngsters to go and visit Holocaust survivors and following such a visit, he explained that they realised that, while the experience of Hizmet had been bad, it was not of genocide and therefore that, learning from the inter-generational trauma of Jews after the Holocaust, “If they have, to a certain extent, overcome the memory of genocide, we can certainly overcome this.”

It is, however, important to note that the trauma does not only affect the asylum-seekers directly. As HE1, an anonymous interviewee publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe put it: “One of my friends told me, it was, I think, a nice quote, that if you lose someone, in that case you mourn for someone and you have to. But for our case, that trauma, if it continues it affects all the body, and the whole body cannot act in a healthy manner.” It is against this overall background of the impact of the events of July 2016 on the whole of Hizmet, that Gülen is both himself dealing with trauma and also trying to assist Hizmet as a whole in dealing with it. As Haylamaz then summarised the time since the events of 2016, in which “You know, billions of dollars of assets have been confiscated. Two hundred thousand people dismissed from their jobs. Many have to flee from the country with boats and some of them drowning in the sea”:

Looking at what has been happening for the last four years: all this foul language used against him, being called a terrorist, and this entire government mobilizing all its resources, as well as their political diplomatic power to declare as number one enemy. And even bribing, you know, there is this Michael Flynn case here, millions of dollars to kidnap him and portray him as the cruellest person living on earth. And having lost his forty or fifty years of work and still trying to be destroyed not in Turkey only, but especially in Africa, unfortunately.

In relation to all of this Haylamaz says that Gülen is “one of the most sensitive, most fragile and delicate person I’ve ever known” but that “Despite that nature that he has, he also has a very strong willpower that balances that nature and uses it in the favour of forgiveness.” Therefore:

You know, normally, a person as sensitive as Hojaefendi should have exploded by now, but he has a huge willpower and he stands as he does where the Qur’an and the Prophet’s example is teaching us to stand. It is the reason why while this guy is putting us in jails, dismissing us from our jobs, but no violent retaliation has ever happened in these last four years. In the most sorrowful occasions in the life of the Prophet, when his most beloved Companions and family died you can see he was very sorrowful, but he balanced it with his faith in the mercy and compassion of God Almighty. So, he was always able to strike that balance, not to go extreme in his emotions, and balancing them with reason and faith.

And, therefore, Haylamaz says:

And in the last four years, perhaps he has been reserving three fourths of his sermons to inculcate in our hearts to learn to forgive. It was the same thing with the Prophet. The Prophet did his best to eliminate all the conflicts in his time, so they are not carried further to be burden onto the next generations. He buried so many things in his own soul, so that grudge and hatred were not inherited to turn into something like blood feud.

Ergene also emphasises that post-July 2016, Gülen now even more frequently underlines that if one is a Muslim, one should be merciful, fair, and forgiving, or at least be able to reach a conclusion in a dispute without violence. But not only avoiding such things, but also emphasising the positive possibilities:

If God ever gives us a chance again to engage peacefully with these people, we have to learn how to forgive as well. Hojaefendi follows this example of the Prophet, for, there are many who cannot digest all this persecution and who may be tempted to transgress what is permissible.

In such a context and taking seriously the degree of its overall impact, Balçi poses the sharp question, of which he says, “We have to ask this question, maybe we have to revoke biblical orders not to forget and maybe we should forget.” Elaborating on this and picking up on the general stance being taken by Gülen, Balcı noted that:

I assume Hojaefendi has been preparing us for that for the last three years. He has been speaking about that forgiveness, which does not exist in our books. He says you will forgive and you will even deny when the repenters come and say, forgive us for we have done this, you will say, no you didn’t do that – it never happened. It’s not easy, I am not ready for that. But, in order to save, I think, the future generation from that burden, we have to make a certain kind of, we have to give up.

In summary, Haylamaz refers to the prototypical Treaty of Hudabiyyah with regard to which a majority of the friends of the Prophet were angry with him because he did not insist on his previously recognised rights to enter Mecca for a minor pilgrimage and that,

Following the footsteps of the Prophet, Hojaefendi is not asking for any blood feud. If you need to be enemy against something, be enemy to the feeling of animosity; this is what he is saying. He doesn’t want the conflicts of this generation to be transported to the next generations. This is in fact why he is emphasising on this forgiveness issue. That’s what the Prophet did.

Thus overall: “Hojaefendi is trying to diminish the tension between Hizmet and other people, because the other side is not ready to listen. He once said, ‘Sometimes taking one step back enables you to take ten steps forward the next day.’ ” And with regard to the example of the Treaty, Haylamaz underlines that:

Although they resisted for twenty-one years, once they become friends of the Prophet, he treats them as if they had always been friends from the beginning. Spiritually he takes them as if they had been together from the beginning. And they do not become friends at the surface; they embraced him wholeheartedly and did many sacrifices on his path.

Thus in this situation, the stance being taken by Gülen is of great significance. Tekalan says that “He recommends patience to us. He advises against any illegal retaliation.” At the same time, as Yeşilova makes clear of Gülen, that in taking such a stance “He’s not saying do not pursue your legal rights, that something else.”

Nevertheless, in terms of what has happened following July 2016, the challenges involved have reached a new level both for Hizmet and for Gülen himself. Indeed, when meeting with Gülen for interview, the author of this book could clearly see how the present situation was weighing very heavily upon him because thousands of people who have been suffering injustice because of their connection in one way or another to him, whether real or imagined, conscious or accidental. In relation to this, Naziri from Spain commented “It’s difficult, it’s difficult, feeling that responsibility, yeah of course, yeah of course, God help him, I don’t know,” while Ablak said “It is very hard for him to see and know that all those people suffering because of just being part of the Hizmet movement. He doesn’t see himself as being, like the founder or the leader of the Hizmet movement. But it is painful.” Coming from his background as a medical doctor, Gülen’s close associate Tekalan further explained the inter-relationship between Gülen’s physical and emotional state:

Fethullah Gülen now has some problems from his intestines. They don’t work properly because he eats really minimally and some physicians come and visit him and explain that ‘if you eat only a little, they won’t work properly and then you will have some problems. He says, “Yes, I know very well. But unfortunately, there are so many people in Turkey, they cannot find out anything to eat, so I don’t eat to understand their situation doing empathy. Yes, I know, if I don’t eat, I will have a problem but I am conscious of these things.” As a medical doctor, I try frequently to explain things – and one time I said, “I understand that you to do the empathy really deeply, very deeply, on behalf of those who are in jail, who are outside of Turkey, who need so many things. As a Hizmet Movement, we need that you have your morale and your health. And we learned to believe in destiny from you. For these reasons, please keep your morale and keep your health.” He said to me “Yes, Mister Doctor, I understand. I believe in the destiny of course, but it is very difficult for me, very difficult, but I will try.”

In summary, with reference to the post-July 2016 events, when questioned about this in interview, Gülen himself said that “this last time has taken a real toll on me. I sometimes say it took a toll of twenty years within two years on me.” Nevertheless, as a person of faith, he could still affirm that “I never fell into desperation” and that “I still preserve and keep my hope, but I cannot say I am not affected.” Despite this, as Tekalan says of Gülen: “He always gives us morale and motivation. He’s advising us to keep our psychology intact.” With reference to an image used by Rumi and often cited by Gülen, AS1 says of his own asylum-seeker experience that:

And this actually was against the famous word of Rumi to keep a space in your chest for the whole of humanity. Now I can open my arms just totally. For instance, we are now staying in collective accommodation centers in camps and there are too many people coming around the world. It is like a dream, I can say. Some come from Tibet, some come from Ethiopia, African part, and we are coming from the other Asian parts. And we can live together. And it is also so educating for me. I hope this education will, at the end, reach a good point and that I will be able to model or sample for my children at least, and at the most for all those who know me, and this voluntary movement can go further, and get better.

3 The Hijrah Interpretation and Post-Fact Religious Causality

In addition to the direct effects of the events of July 2016 and their aftermath upon him and upon many people in Hizmet, Gülen has also had the challenging task of trying to advise Hizmet people on how best to navigate an understanding of their often radically changed circumstances. One of the ways in which a number of people in Hizmet have tried to conceptualise and interpret their situation has been by reference to the Islamically important—and often invoked in Hizmet—leitmotif of hijrah, building upon Muhammad’s importantly constitutive of the Muslim Ummah journey from Mecca to Madina. It is because of sharing such a perspective that, in speaking of those Hizmet people who have had to flee Turkey, Naziri from Spain explained that “We never want to use, multeci (multaji derives from iltija)” which, in terms of the English equivalents, would be refugee or asylum seeker “so I say hijrah” because “It could be me in their place.” As Niziri explains it:

These guys are like, every one is normal, if you understand me correctly – normal guys who were professors, teachers, etc etc, doing their job, studied their profession, and then they have just an ideology if you name it so, or life philosophy, and also the relation to the Hizmet, and then they have this accusation and you see yourself this trouble.

In the interviews that the author made with some of what, within Naziri’s framework, are called the muhajir, as a fellow human being one got a very clear sense of the profound trauma and suddenness of what happened to them (see Weller 2022, Sects. 4.5 and 4.6). As an example of this, Tekalan has attempted to interpret his own experience of becoming exiled within this hermeneutical framework of hijrah as, follows:

In history, there so many cases of hijrah. Our cases, for those who had to leave the country, are also within the frame of hijrah where we must keep our patience and turns it toward active patience which means not to stay passively but to try to achieve many goals in addition to having patience. It could be voluntary or involuntary, it does not matter.

In relation this, Yeşilova has noted that “hijrah is a big emphasis in Hojaefendi’s life. But we realise it’s a part of Islam too.” Thus, since the events of July 2016 and what followed, Fethullah Gülen has spoken about the contrast between those who, in the past, undertook hijrah as a voluntary activity understood within a framework of it being a hizmet, or service, but that now much of the migration in which people from Hizmet are involved has become involuntary. When asked specifically about ‘involuntary hijrah’ and how far it could be likened to the classical sense of hijrah, Gülen’s own perspective was:

In a sense this movement out of Turkey can be likened to hijrah but of course there are substantial differences. First, we should recognise that Muslims in Mecca were not given any chance to live in Mecca as a Muslim. So, they had to leave and when they arrived in Medina established a new kind of government, a new kind of state, a new kind of civilization, but people of Hizmet are integrating relative to their new societies. But, depending on their intention in their hearts, their movement with the right intention can be likened to the hearts of the people who migrated. So, in some sense it is similar to hijrah, but in other sense it is not similar to hijrah.

As illustrative of Gülen’s perceptions of the impact on people in Hizmet and hence the poignancy of its impact on Gülen himself, one can refer to his 21 February 2018, reflections on “Living Abroad: Migration, Martyrdom and Service.” These reflections give a sense of the humanity behind the numbers, including the feelings of earthly homesickness that accompany this, but also the attempt to set all of this within a more eternal perspective:Verse

Verse A home a place they are used to… Their street, a place they are used to…. Relatives and neighbours they sat and talked with…. Parents, relatives, children, forced apart, forced to be away…. Travelling to the Hereafter.

The frame of reference within which this needs to be understood is not that of an overly piousreligious belief that superficially glosses over the challenges and the sufferings of the present in an easy perception of a coming eternity. Rather, it is one that while taking pain and suffering seriously also seek to learn from what has happened when exiles have sought help and other Hizmet people have generously responded. Thus, Gülen notes of some within Hizmet that, “When they saw the deprivation and the suffering some took out their house keys from their pockets and handed them over” and “If there were no keys, they would say ‘rent a place somewhere and we will pay the rent’.” But beyond learning from responses coming from within Hizmet itself, Gülen notes that countries that do not have a Muslim majority population, also felt moved to offer support citing, among others, the examples of Canada, France, the USA, and Germany. As for the ‘Islamic world,’ Gülen articulated the sharp critique that: “a majority they just slept” and “How shameful it is to sleep next to the one who acts, one moves to offer support.”

Drawing still wider lessons from this in terms of the relationship between one’s beliefs, identity, and actions, Gülen argues that “There may not be things that are required in your set of beliefs, but there are the attributes of a believer” and that “God does not look at your appearance or your identity whether you say ‘Allah’, ‘I am Turkish’, ‘I am Kurdish’, ‘I am Albanian’, ‘I am Bosnian’, ‘I am Georgian’ or any other ethnicity. He looks at your heart, the sense of humanity and the belief that resides therein.” Nevertheless, despite these signs of wider humanity and of the encouragement that they bring both to people in Hizmet who have directly suffered in the aftermath of July 2016, and to Gülen himself, Ergene emphasises of Gülen that:

What has happened in the last three four years has probably deepened his pain even more. You are having this caravan that has been on its way with humble moves for over forty years and now some bandits come and destroy it. I mean this is a bankruptcy: imagine a boss or business owner who was so big, with this many amount of people around him, after all this collapsed, you would expect him to commit a suicide, you know, after all this huge loss. But you see him as an opposite pole: this huge spiritual power that keeps him alive, trying to motivate us, trying to still inspire us to stand and move forward. He is also very deeply suffering from not being understood. He’s not accusing others for this, but he is questioning himself too: why have we not been understood?

Nonetheless, since Gülen is also a person of faith his approach to understanding any historical events is one that is rooted in faith and permeatively informed by a perspective of hope. In relation to this, Gülen himself explains:

In one sense I think people within Hizmet, these are people who believe in universal human values, human values that they believe could be shared by the vast majority of humanity. But have been, in a sense, concentrated in Turkey. And as Muslims they were not able to represent these values through their lives in other parts of the world. It appears that God and destiny pushed them forcibly to live in other parts of the world so that they can display this beautiful face of Islam and tell the world that Islam cannot be represented by ISIS or Al-Queada – but there are Muslims like these. This appears to be destiny’s direction for the people of Hizmet: that they failed to do this voluntarily, in a sense, God pushed them involuntarily into the world. So, I see this representation of Islam in a positive and peaceful way through members of Hizmet as some good that came out of this terrible situation.

As an example from within Hizmet of the impact of the interpretive framework advocated by Gülen, while a pragmatic businessperson by profession, Fidan recounts that he has also learned to look at these developments on two levels, noting that:

As believers we look into events with prisms of two perspectives: how they look on the outside for apparent causes, and for what really is happening for some invisible reasons that are taking place behind the apparent causes. Apparently, what happened four years ago was the same government was caught red handed in corruption in the December 17th process as it is called, and since then they are persecuting our movement. But on the invisible side of things, which we also need to take a look into, it’s probably because we did not fulfil our duties enough. For instance when a judge gives a verdict on you for a crime you did not commit and they sentence you to a certain punishment it is probably unfair, but you actually had committed something wrong before so you can see this balance being struck by destiny for the other crime you had committed on another occasion. So apparently, yes, the judge was unfair, but destiny was fair for the other crime you had committed. And in this case, our crime was, we did not go out, we did not leave our homes, although Hojaefendi had been telling us to leave our homes and go and spread around the world. Millions of us, we were stuck in Turkey, and now under the persecution of a tyrant, now our friends are fleeing Turkey to move to the rest of the world, some of them through very difficult means, even they have to swim in the Mediterranean for this. A family got drowned, actually two weeks ago. So, you see there are the apparent causes, and the invisible causes to things.

Ultimately, however, from Gülen’s perspective, because he primarily looks at temporal things within an overall theological vision of the passing of all earthly powers, despite the suffering that he is very much aware of that come out of July 2016, informed by the conviction of faith, he can say:

On the other hand, this persecution, all the oppression, I don’t think it will last for very long. One scholar once said disbelief will continue to the end of the world because this disbelief concerns God. But oppression and persecution will not last in any location, in any particular context. When you look at the example of Hitler, at the example of Saddam, of Gaddafi, or others like themselves who persecuted people, they end up with terrible ends.

And from a reading of the signs of the times, Gülen still affirms with confidence that there can be a different future for Turkey itself too:

So, I think their end is near and they will face a similar end like those people. Right now you can see the signs of their end, because the world has a perspective on them. They are recognising their persecution – the authoritarian, dictatorial nature of their leadership. In many respects, in many respects, in many dimensions, politically, economically, culturally they are going down.

However, both the background inheritance and impact of the ‘Islam of Heroism,’ and also the ways in which both many with Hizmet and Gülen himself try to deal with the trauma experienced by Hizmet post-July 2016 can coalesce into the challenge which Keleş calls the issue of ‘religious causality’ and identifies as one of the underlying reasons for why many people in Hizmet struggle to articulate what has happened and has also been going on since July 2016. This is the issue, as Keleş expresses it, that “If we ascribe post-fact everything in a positive way, if we interpret everything post-fact in a positive way, then we learn nothing from anything.” And, as already noted in the first section of this chapter, when discussing the impact on Muslims of ‘Islam of Heroism,’ Keleş sees this as intimately being linked with the much bigger theological challenge that he believes observant Muslims in general can have with loss and defeat, the self-awareness which he does shrink from linking with the wider and big theological issue of the understanding of divine destiny, in relation to which he points out that:

Nursi says look at the future as something that’s always within your willpower. Look at the past as something that is determined by God’s destiny, so that you never criticise the past. In Islamic history there’s significant wars after the passing of the Prophet, where tens of thousands of Companions died fighting each other. Ayesha, the Prophet’s wife, leading one group against Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, leading another. We gloss over this history. Hussain, the Prophet’s grandson was beheaded by a Muslim, precipitating the creation of the first Islamic dynasty, leading to the Sunni/Shia split in Islam. But we don’t teach this. Gűlen doesn’t teach this: according to Gülen, all of the Ottoman Sultans were saints. Nursi interprets the loss of the Uhud battle, waged during the time of the Prophet, as the future Muslims (the Meccans) winning over the present Muslims (the Muslims of Medina). In other words, Nursi says that this was not really a defeat because those that won would eventually convert to Islam anyway.

Keleş summarises this in terms of the challenge both in and to Islamic orthodoxy of the issue of causality of the danger of making after the fact justifications and rationalisations. In the light of this and taking, for example, the narrative referred to in Sect. 5.1 of this chapter that because people didn’t voluntarily do hijrah—that it is occurring in an involuntary way as a kind of a judgement, in relation to which Keleş says, on the one hand, that “That might be the case,” but also that:

It doesn’t mean that there is nothing to be learned from this. This is the problem. We can chew our gum and scratch our head at the same time. It could have been that. But the unwillingness to discuss this and to think about this, it goes, I think, in part down to the way that we understand success and God’s support, if you like, for want of another word, to be God-like or to be in God’s way, must mean worldly success which goes back to the Calvinist type of interpretation, you know, if we are “Chosen People”, so to speak, then we must be successful in everything we do.

Keleş referred to Lesley Hazleton (2012) who, in one of her Ted Talks talks about the Prophet’s own account of how he received revelation for the first time and alongside that about the early accounts written about the Prophet’s life. Of this Keleş summarises that: “She says that these early accounts presented the Prophet in far more humanistic terms than those that followed, which presented him in far more supernatural terms, making the Prophet less relatable,” out of which, as Keleş says of the Prophet: “That’s why his every action was not only ethically correct, it was also successful in the worldly sense – that’s a very tall order. So, what happens when your ethical action may not produce a worldly success, what do you choose? And in the example of Hizmet it appears that we have chosen to bend our principles.” Thus, Keleş summarises that “Altogether, such practices of whitewashing loss and basic human nature has robbed us of the possibility of exploring success in failure and triumph in defeat. In some sense, we have equated spiritual success and God’s blessing with worldly success and worldly blessing.” And it is this, which leads Keleş to the startling reflection, albeit not explained further by him, that “This is why the Crucifix is such a powerful symbol and teaching in Christianity.”

4 Self-Criticism and Its Limits

The issue of post-fact religiouscausality issue is of considerable importance in relation to the question that will be explored in the final section of this book which is that of how far those within Hizmet are able to confront and process the events leading up to, in, and following July 2016, especially in so far as these not only impact upon Hizmet, but also raise questions for Hizmet about itself. While many in Hizmet public positions naturally want to put a clear distance between the tendentious accusations cast at Gülen and Hizmet as being responsible for having organised the events of July 2016, among some of the asylum-seekers interviewed, and for many becoming also part of the trauma, are existential and profoundly disturbing questions that the events of July 2016 and what led up to them have raised. With regard to these questions, AS1 says “I am always asking this: what has happened” in relation to which:

There are many questions in our minds because of this coup attempt, because what I am thinking is that is organised very, very cleverly. And of course, someone from us connected, how to say, is in this coup, I am also thinking, because otherwise they couldn’t get the people to believe we are engaged with this coup.

And also:

People who we have seen as our friends being engaged with coup and still, unfortunately, in this Movement, I believe this. This is my opinion. And here, the same thoughts I can see also in their minds in the diaspora who support the Hizmet movement – and because of that they have hesitations about what we do or what we didn’t.

Even if one does not, as this book does not, accept the narratives of those who ascribe the events of July 2016 to an attempt organised by Gülen and/or Hizmet as such to take power in Turkey, such questions and issues are real for those who are burdened by them and, if the trauma is Hizmet is to be overcome, need to be dealt with more honestly and openly by those in public positions within Hizmet who are sometimes reluctant to do this, precisely out of a concern that doing so might seem to justify and give comfort to the Turkish authorities’ continuing unjust treatment of Hizmet people within Turkey. But Keleş significantly argues that not doing self-criticism sufficiently, rather than helping the people in Turkey or those who have fled from it is actually “prolonging the pain of the persecuted people in Turkey” because such self-criticism would then “allow people to complexify Hizmet’s composition.” Keleş said:

People are saying this to me: that they are afraid to stand up for Hizmet, because they feel that standing by 90% of it may seem as standing by 100% of it, including aspects that appear suspect and problematic. So, I mean, the status quo is a decision, it has ramifications. This is why I keep on: indecision is not an absence of decision.

As Keleş, for example, points out, although in its earlier development, Hizmet managed to keep a good distance from political parties, as things eventually developed in Turkey:

The movement supported the AKP by distributing leaflets for theAKP in Turkey, correct? We heard about this: going door to door. You don’t get more supportive than that. Whether it’s strategic, whether it’s this, that’s not our principle. Why is Hizmet the most hated group in Turkey, apart from the demonization of theAKP? Why is there so much hatred? – because we said one thing and did another, and in doing so, we enabled and empowered theAKP regime. This goes back to what Hizmet stands for. If Hizmet stands for itself, then it has made itself sacred and in doing so, has become extremely pragmatic. That means, to survive, today’s “wrongs” become tomorrow’s “rights” and that is what “pees off” a lot of people, and rightly so.

Of course, it is not that Hizmet is, as some try to construct it, especially guilty. As Keleş articulates it: “Every group in Turkey is guilty. There is no innocent – I mean you start from the Kemalists, they have no leg to stand on. They created this mess by persecuting pious Muslims for so long, they created the AKP.” In relation to this, even Keleş while critiquing Hizmet on the basis that “I’m not saying all these external factors are to blame, yes you should have overcome this, you should have overcome that” nevertheless acknowledged that Kemalists “created Hizmet’s mindset. Gülen was jailed in 1970s, he was sought after in the 1980s” and because of this, Keleş also says of Gülen himself that “He has a securitised mindset.” Nevertheless, even Keleş acknowledges that, overall:

If you look at the Turkishreligious landscape, Hizmet is in fact the most advanced of those, I mean it is more open, it is the more dialogic, it is engaging with other people. If the Kemalists outdid themselves as much as Gülen outdid himself, and the movement outdid itself in the religious landscape, we would have a different kind of world here. The Kemalists did not outdo themselves. So, nobody is – I mean, the Kurds as well, I mean, I hate that Salahattin Demirtas is in prison, but has the HDP party been able to deal with the PKK past and its history? Has it been able to differentiate from that, publicly, sufficiently? The left wing, I mean, the social party, the CHP Party, was it able to deal with its Kemalist past, has it been able to offer public self-criticism and embrace the other half of the population. At every critical juncture, the CHP party supported Erdoğan in entering parliament, in securing critical votes, in legitimising his presidency etc. No group is free of political guilt in Turkey, and that includes Hizmet.

Nevertheless, Keleş also argues that:

The fact that others also have much to apologise for does not exclude Hizmet from doing so also and coming to terms with the mistakes it made and why and how they came about. But can it change? I don’t know because if we constantly find ways of justifying failing as, in fact, success, then what is there to learn from.

In terms of understanding what has happened to Hizmet post July 2016 and in the run up to it and what is currently happening in relation to internal debates within Hizmet, it should be noted that many of the relevant debates are conducted in Turkish and can be found over a range of weblinks. Of relevance to such debates is that throughout Gülen’s own teaching the note of self-criticism—that a key role of Islam is that it should bring about real self-examination and self-criticism, coupled with an understanding acceptance of the weaknesses and failures of others—is very strong and very consistent. Tekalan said of Gülen that:

As someone who’s known him for over forty-eight years, if you ask me what I’ve learned from him in the meantime, I can say two things. First, do you shape your life according to the Qur’an and according to the hadiths? Second, you have to be other people’s lawyers, but you have to be your own prosecutor.

Interviewee Ercan Karakoyun (see Acknowledgements) from Germany, says that his reading of Gülen’s teaching is that “no matter what happens to you, you have to look for the mistake in yourselves. So, what did I do wrong that I am in this situation now? And if you are always point to the others’ mistakes, you won’t get one step forward.” On the other hand, when an initiative has been around for a period for of time, there is always a tendency towards solidifying a particular status quo which Karakoyun explains in the following way:

Well, the point is there is no – how would you say it – no proper discussion going on because we have the problem that people that are engaged in Hizmet for many, many years and who are in influential or in higher positions they, of course, are very much trying to focus on keeping the status quo, because they say, it’s not our fault: it has to do with Turkey and Turkey is guilty.

However, HE3 (see Acknowledgements) from the Netherlands says “My own observation is that Fethullah Gülen is a good guy, and people on the ground here, and in other countries also, they have a good sense of contribution to the society in which they live.” However, in relation to what HE3 from The Netherlands calls the ‘middle management’ around him, he sees this as “still too ‘Turkish and Turkish-oriented’” and that in communication with Gülen, “the signals from the people have not been properly analysed, managed and told to Gülen to get his ideas and advices.” In relation to this, Keleş also notes that “the people around him have a preference for the status quo,” while HE3 in summary commented that:

I think the coup in 2016 in Turkey has so far forced the ‘middle management’ that they have to think and act in another way. And this is why I say that Erdoğan did it something – which is painful, which I say, because there are lots of people in jail in Turkey and who are suffering many things. But the coup that Erdoğan did towards the movement has a huge impact on the middle management and how people now think about their role in the movement. Internal criticism and critical thinking among Hizmet people have increased enormously. Erdoğan does not know this, that he has done a ‘good’ job for the movement.

This is sensitive and difficult territory because, on the one hand, especially for those who have been with Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet for a long time, there is naturally a strong wish to defend him and the wider Hizmet and, not surprisingly also themselves, against what are seen as unjust accusations. And this is particularly so on the other side of July 2016 and what many thousands of Hizmet people have experienced in terms of persecution, loss of jobs, deprivation of assets, and exile. As one example of this, Haylamaz notes of his own experience as a longstanding close associate of Gülen that, “I have been tapped for four years, for instance, and I am now reading the indictment against me. The only accusation they are bringing is ‘he is from Hizmet’. It is no different with other people. This means, they have not found anything to bring any reasonable charge against these people.” What is more, as Haylamaz says: “When you look back at what has happened in Turkey, Hizmet is probably the most transparent and formally transparent group in Turkey and probably in the Muslim world.” As noted in Weller 2022, Sect. 5.4 and its discussion about Hizmet and transparency: “This has not been in Hizmet’s favour. Those who are now persecuting Hizmet has had easy access to everyone affiliated with Hizmet; they have all the lists of people. If someone has not chosen to remain less formal, this was mainly for the fear for despotic regimes they live under.”

In relation to this, Haylamaz argues that “The basic dynamic of Hizmet is trust,” while observing that, “I think some of the concerns that rise around informal structures and accountability are mostly related to financial issues.” With regard to this, he underlines that “Hojaefendi has always mentioned that community leaders of Hizmet should never deal with financial issues: they should never ‘touch’ the money” and that “The example that Hojaefendi keeps giving to us is the example of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph. A jar was discovered in his home after he was deceased, and in the jar was the remaining of what he was given to him as a salary. He asked his daughter to give it back to the government.” Especially in relation to Gülen’s own family, Haylamaz notes that Gülen cites the example of the second Caliph Umar who many people advised him to select his own son who was very skilful and talented to be the next Caliph. However, he did not do so in relation to which Haylamaz reports that “Hojaefendi is calling himself ‘I am Umari’ – other words of the school of Umar” in that he never favours his own family in this matter. He keeps his brothers, he keeps his family away from any status within Hizmet. Hizmet is Hizmet, its servants.” Because of this Haylamaz says of Gülen that,

In one of his prayer books he actually prays against those who abuse Hizmet’s resources for their own benefit or who seek personal gains out of the opportunities formed around Hizmet. He always discouraged people from making worldly investments for luxurious lifestyles. And, again, his own brothers said Hojafendi had this prayer for them that they shouldn’t become rich; and how everybody can see in what circumstances they live.

And arising from all of this, Haylamaz notes, “This is why the AKP government actually went wild and crazy because they could not find anything. Some may have certain things from their families, but other than a few, the rest do not possess anything in this world” and, in summary, reports a former Deputy Prime Minister, Hayati Yazici as having said “Those who wants to take (or fill their pockets) come to us, theAKP party; those who want to give, they go to Hizmet.”

Nevertheless, even bearing in mind all of the ways in which the movement is unjustly targeted, Keleş is one among those who have called for what he calls “an internal dialogue” within Hizmet. However, he says that reaction to this call has been “very enlightening” in so far as “our call for internal public self-criticism is being misunderstood by the movement.” Explaining this further:

The criticism that we level at the movement stems from a certain perspective and experience we have gained in part because Hizmet has encouraged us to engage in certain practices. For example, through dialogue, we have sustained social and intellectual interaction and engagement with the other, which has enabled us to better appreciate what Hizmet could be doing better, which is often the basis of our self-criticism. So, while I often remind myself of this, it doesn’t necessarily change the validity of the point that we are making.

Keleş also noted of some of Hizmet colleagues, particularly in the USA, that “We found that they weren’t sufficiently aware of the various levels of criticisms that were being levelled at the movement, some of which were, actually, well-founded. They weren’t so worried about that, or some of them weren’t even aware of that.” As an example of this kind of issue, Keleş refers to the role of the Hizmet magazine, Caglayan, which he describes as “Hizmet’s sort of ‘flagship’ … and you could see it as the, sort of, official Gazette,” Keleş recalls that in one of the issues, it published an abridged version of an article that had already been published elsewhere which criticised public self-criticism of Hizmet. In response, Keleş recalls that:

So, I wrote on Twitter, I said, well I am glad that Caglayan has published this. This suggests they are open to debate and that they will be open to having a counter article on this, because you know, otherwise you are just beating a straw man, you know. And so, they wrote to me, you know, on What’s App, saying we are open, of course we are…and they sent me their policy…and in their policy it says, “Original articles will be considered”. And I said, “Well this isn’t original, why did you publish it?” And then we wrote a bit more and then I said, secondly, I said, “Did this chap even ask for this article to be published?”. It turns out that it was someone who read it to Gülen, and Gülen says “This is great” and then, so, it wasn’t the author’s request. And then the third point was the more we discussed, at the end of the conversation, the chap says, “you know what I don’t even know – they said to us put this in, some of us even objected and I don’t even know why they did it” – which goes to the heart of the problem.

Keleş sees this as very much illustrative of the key problem which is that “You can’t create an identity around Caglayan as a magazine. Caglayan cannot create great writers and a new way of thinking and so forth if it is operating under a shadow, if it is unclear what it is.” And this leads Keleş into wider considerations, “So, while I admire Gülen for many of his good qualities as you know, I reject this form of dualism in decision-making.” And as he goes on, he makes a link with the previous section’s discussion of religious causality in terms that, “If we justify everything post-fact, then what happens to accountability, what happens to those who repeatedly make mistakes with the decisions that they take?”

More recently illustrative of, and even more sharply focusing the tension present in these issues is the debate around the November 2018 Joint Statement on Hizmet’s Decision-Making Processes (20 November 2018) which was prepared for signature by:

A group Hizmet participants, primarily engaged in Hizmet-related dialogue activities in Western Europe. We prepared this statement of our own free will without consulting or informing Hizmet’s senior participants. The aim was to publish this statement in the last week of November with the support of at least one hundred Hizmet participants from diverse Hizmet backgrounds – dialogue practitioners, academics, community organizers (bölgeci), mentors (rehber), mütevelli (donors) and so forth – from around the world. In doing so, we aimed to contribute towards the process of Hizmet’s renewal through critical self-reflection in the form of a public joint statement, which drew attention to four specific points of concern (and recommendations) regarding Hizmet’s decision-making processes.

The statement itself is accessible on the blog site of Ozcan Keleş: Musings of a British Muslim Academic Activist,Footnote 1 together with a more recently published covering comment from Keleş himself entitled The Suppression of Hizmet’s ‘First’ Self-Critical Joint Co-Option of the Right to Self-Criticize, and from which the above explanation is taken. In the original statement, the intended signatories speak of being “positively moved by Hizmet’s demonstrable achievements” worldwide in the fields of “education, dialogue, social responsibility and citizenship” and that “In many respects, Hizmet has been a pioneering faith-based movement both within and outside of Turkey.” And on the basis of this that “We feel compelled to issue the following statement,” which focused specifically and narrowly on Hizmet’s decision-making processes “because of, not in spite of, our support for Hizmet’s values and its many achievements in the public domain.”

In relation to this, the putative signatories expressed that they were “united in the view that any form of hizmet practice that cannot be conducted in an open, transparent and accountable manner should not be conducted at all.” And although one reason for not being transparent is not to be so vulnerable to external attack, rather more importantly “Opaque decision-making processes mask failure and incompetence in both strategy and people” and that “its work ethic and mindset has been influenced and shaped by the Turkish socio-political landscape and cultural mores,” albeit that its “work ethic and mindset has been enriched by what Fethullah Gülen refers to as the ‘give and take’ of cross-cultural fertilization” leading into it being possible today to “speak of hizmets in the plural” in relation to which “It is important that this emergent heterogeneity in Hizmet is embraced and not inadvertently reversed.”

But the statement then quite challengingly argues that “We suggest that those who do not wish to contribute to Hizmet’s decision-making processes in the manner described herein, or struggle to do so, should not hold formal or informal decision-making roles in Hizmet altogether.” And, even more specifically, “without casting aspersions of any type,” that “Hizmet participants who in recent years held key decision-making roles in Turkey should not hold or be seen to hold any role of similar bearing outside of Turkey,” with among the reasons cited for this being that:

While Hizmet’s grassroots reject the Turkish government’s accusations about Hizmet, an increasing number of Hizmet participants and supporters consider some of these key decision-makers to be morally responsible for Hizmet’s failings and mistakes in Turkey, such as its domineering practices which alienated almost all sections of Turkish society.

And that going forward:

It is imperative that Hizmet’s decision-making processes, especially those pertaining to Hizmet’s general positioning, include male and female participants from a range of Hizmet practices including dialogue, education, relief work and media as well as participants and external advisers with a range of expertise and scholarship with a particular emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. We find it disappointing that, at present, the Hizmet movement appears to be failing to meet this obvious need.

Of what happened to this, Keleş’ explanation is that, “Alas, despite the lapse of time, Hizmet’s senior leadership, for the most part, appears to be focused on maintaining the status quo” and that therefore:

We chose to communicate our concerns through a joint statement to ensure that it was no longer ignored. After all, the issues raised in the statement had been aired countless times before behind closed doors. However, the statement was leaked to Hizmet’s senior participants days before its planned release.

In Keleş’ evaluation, “what followed was the organised suppression of the statement by an opaque and unaccountable decision-making process(es), that is, the very point of complaint highlighted within the said statement.” Referring to a similar statement issued by the Alliance for Shared Values,Footnote 2Keleş said that “The AFSV’s statement drew attention to the issues raised within our statement, albeit in a far more watered down and indirect manner. By publishing their statement before ours, they aimed to co-opt our criticisms and thereby undermine our ability to publish our own.” In summary, Keleş explains that “I am not suggesting that all efforts to bring about change from within Hizmet are broadcast to the world in real-time. However, there are occasions when this becomes necessary” and that “Furthermore, defending Hizmet’s positives requires us to call out Hizmet’s negatives.”

In having given space of this kind to both the original critique and to the later commentary on it, it should in fairness be noted that, especially since at the time of writing, the publication of these documents was very new, as far as this author is aware there was no form of written response to the points that have been made. At the same time, this author is aware that there are those associated with the Alliance for Shared Values who would have a different characterisation of at least aspects of the processes that are addressed in the commentary. And it may also be the case that there is a preference precisely not to make a response in open and written forms. If this is the case, then that of course both gives expression to, and underlines, some of the issues that have been at stake in terms of the varied and currently contested views within Hizmet about how to handle such matters.

In reflecting on self-criticism per se, as distinct from the matter of the arenas in and through which such are pursued, Keleş underlines that he sees the transcending of what has been in the past through self-criticism as having been one of the key characteristics up to now of both Gülen and of Hizmet. In also contributing on the question of self-criticism, Balcı cited both Thomas Aquinas and Said Nursi as part of a wider tradition that puts self-criticism at the heart of religious faithfulness and engagement, as examples of those who “have changed in their lifetimes, who have published their own self-criticisms and so on, and who actually made ‘change’ not only something acceptable or tolerated, but also something appreciated.” At the same time, this self-criticism and change was complex because, in the case of Said Nursi, while he did change during this life, he also never said that he repented for being “the Old Said.” Indeed, Balcı noted that “Sometimes he invited the Old Said to deal with confrontational issues and so on.” But Nursi can nevertheless be contrasted with those who see the main characteristic of being the leader as that of never changing and that “they stand still in their position from day one to the end of the days.” In contrast, “Said Nursi changed, and he was happily accepting that he changed.” When it comes to Gülen, Balcı summarises that, “Hojaefendi changed in front of our eyes and he dragged the whole community to change” and that, as a consequence of that, in relation to Hizmet:

We became open to the idea of change. And, in fact, at some point we became expecting change. When we feel ourselves on edge, we feel ourselves not being able to produce anything, we usually look around and say something new has to be done; something we never tried until now. This is not Islamic, well it’s Islamic in its authenticity, but the East does not like change, the East is conservative. I think this readiness, this openness to change, this openness to learn from our own mistakes, and so on, and to be able to say from now on this is this what I am doing is number one.

And Keleş also positively noted that:

On this point of self-criticism; if you look at Hizmet, it always transcended. In the 60s and 70s, the religious congregation versus the Turkishsecular state: it goes into education, it just takes a different route, it avoids conflict, it transcends it. In the 90s there was another problem, in Turkey the movement is so big now, the state is ready to take over the movement, then in 1997 you have the post-modern coup. But in 1994 Gülen starts dialogue. In the 2000s, Erbakan is collecting money from Germany to found a party, and in Turkey Hizmet is collecting money in Turkey to found schools outside Turkey. So, it is constantly wrong-footing, if you like, the opposition by, if you like, avoiding those kinds of conflicts and transcending the issues even if it is at cost for him, a personal one. He was declared an apostate in the 1980s, because theschools that he opened were secularschools that had to abide by secular laws. He was declared an apostate then. In 1994 he was declared an apostate for dialogue. All of the religious Islamic movements disowned Hizmet then.

Indeed, Keleş underlines that in taking the changed directions that he did, Gülen himself was often misunderstood and faced internal resistance. In relation to this Keleş cites Ahmet Kurucan as recounting that when, in 1994 Gülen said, as discussed in Sect. 4.4, that democracy is not perfect, but it is the best system and we cannot retreat from it. Kurucan also says that he asked one of the senior Abis or older students what Gülen meant by this and the abi concerned said “Hojaefendi was ill that day, you know.” While the records show that Gülen was indeed ill at that time, as Keleş emphasises, “Gülen was clearly saying something that didn’t resonate there and then with his followers, he was moving beyond them.” Taking that as a lesson, Keleş argues that “So, when some say, ‘why are you engaging in self-criticism’, we say (a) it is the ethical thing to do, and (b) because it is also the thing to do to transcend the framing of the movement. The movement transcended the framing in the past” when people tried to tie it down to being either a religious movement or a social movement. Therefore, as Keleş starkly asked in one of his tweets, “If Gülen were thirty-year old volunteer, would he be part of this movement, would the movement allow him to be?” At the same time, while some of the challenges identified by Keleş may, as he says, be to do with what he calls “the internal dynamic of the movement,” he also notes additionally that:

It may be to do with Hojaefendi’s age. I believe that Hojaefendi also has a preference to avoid that diversification, that type of self-critical approach that we are suggesting. I think he is now more in favour of a more traditional approach – traditional in the sense of Hizmet’s practices. I have my theories as to why that is, but ultimately he is now 80 years old. Before he was in the public, he had two different channels of communication. He was doing the sermons, that was really important, to meet people. And Gülen is someone who learns from people, you see that. But those channels of communication are shut down and he’s a bit like an Oxford professor in Oxford all the time that only sees his students. There is something that is in his speech, his demeanour. It’s very contextual for the people that he’s speaking to. But when he was giving a sermon, he was very different, he spoke differently. Even today, if you look at the two speech patterns, and the lexicon, and the speed, it was a different thing. He doesn’t have that communication channel open to him. So, it’s very archaic, it’s still very esoteric in some ways.

Summatively speaking, in relation to these kind of ongoing discussions about the future of Hizmet, Karakoyun speaks of “some fractions” that he sees as “poles.” On the one hand, he identifies that “a lot of academics from Hizmet say that everything has to be changed.” On the other hand, “the people who are the decision-makers in Hizmet at the moment, their position is to say no, we won’t change anything. We are beaten by the big Turkish state. We are wounded.” Overall, the anonymous interviewee HE1 thinks this is a challenge for the Hizmet people more broadly in that “they have really to get together and to change things, change direction,” but also that a social scientist friend of his “made an analogy of a ship, like an Atlantic liner with thousands of people. And if you change the direction in a sharp manner then the system of steering breaks. So, you have to do you it in such a way.” Of course, the positive thing that one can about transitions is that, only living things transition. If things or movements are dead, they are no longer in transition, and it is the argument of this book that this is not the case with regard to Hizmet. As Keleş put it in an interesting analogy:

In organisational studies there is that organisations need different types of leaders and different types of work ethic in relation to its socio-historical environment and development. Take, for example, the Kodak camera: it was all based on print pictures, and actually the founders were not from that technology, they didn’t come from that background, they spent a lot of time, a lot of energy creating that business model, which was great. Now the chap that eventually went to Sony and created the revolution in cameras at digital Sony, before he went there as CEO he was the deputy CEO at Kodak, and he said that he just could not convince them. He saw that photographs would be stored digitally rather than printed and advocated the need to change the entire business model, but he failed to convince them and they went out of business not being able to change….and the guy who failed to convince Kodak went onto Sony where he steered the company to great success by leading the digital camera revolution. And now you’ve got iPhones and Apple, and they digitalised music, when it was not their industry, and in that, Sony failed to adapt on time, despite it being their core business with Walkman’s, CD players etc. So, they asked Steve Jobs, how could that happen? – and he said they could not conceptualise music in software.

The anonymous interviewee HE1 says, “There are lots of signs of life inside the community, but it’s for sure that lots of people are confused. And Fethullah Gülen is also not giving any concrete directions. It’s like he is waiting for something.” Naziri commented that in the context of Hizmet’s present trauma, Gülen is primarily trying to maintain unity. This should be understood against the background of every movement—religious or otherwise—that undergoes a major trauma, given that such trauma can expose fundamental fault lines that may have previously existed but which now cannot be avoided.

While interviewee Ramazan Özgü (see Acknowledgements) from Switzerland, thinks that Gülen has, perhaps, fundamentally completed his work except for holding unity, Keleş poses the question of whether he might still be able to go further, saying, “I mean he’s a great man, he’s far greater than me personally, but I mean can he do that final thing? It’s the final trick, I mean will he be able to allow for that, and I don’t know.” In fact, with reference to the future, Gülen himself says that “They will not understand me anymore, and they will do their own thing,” of which Keleş comments:

It’s a very Islamic thing. The Prophet, he could say I am following in the footsteps of the Prophet and he would be right in some ways, because the Prophet does not determine a clear successor politically. He doesn’t. He does inferences, but you always think to yourself, my God, because other than one of the successors of the four Rightly Guided (they call them), all three were murdered by schisms. I mean we never recovered from that: the Shi’a Islam, Sunni Islam, is based on that. And Nursi, I think as well, Nursi creates a sort of a group [shura] for consultation to lead the Nur movement after his departure. But I guess that at some level you can’t do this at the end – you have to have created that culture of independence while you’re alive and many years prior to your death.

As anonymous interviewee EH1 says:

I mean there are a lot of questions and critiques right now going on in Hizmet, and there are people who are reflect on it. I think it is a very good thing although there are some comments on which I don’t agree and other comments with which I partially agree. And it’s quite an issue right now that we are discussing these things.