The promise of Islamic moral governance

Fethullah Gülen, who died on 21 October, was arguably the most influential religious figure in the history of the Turkish Republic. Starting in the 1960s and 70s, he built a powerful religious movement known as Hizmet (service). The Gülen movement stood out by establishing a civil society network in Turkey and around the world, including schools, philanthropic projects, interfaith dialogue organisations and media outlets. By the early 2010s, it was one of the largest transnational Islamic networks, with 2,000 schools in more than 160 countries, 1-2 million dedicated followers and several million sympathisers. 

The Gülen movement flourished through an alliance with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), forged in the early 2000s. The collaboration continued until 2013 when Gülen-linked prosecutors initiated a corruption probe targeting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inner circle. Though credible, these accusations highlighted the movement's influence within the state, unsettling the public and prompting secularists, other religious groups and the broader public to view the movement's role in the state apparatus as problematic. 

Erdoğan responded by purging Gülenists from the state, a campaign that escalated after the failed coup attempt of 15 July 2016. Details of that night remain unclear, but the government framed it as a Gülenist power grab. Erdoğan’s ensuing crackdown led to the arrest of approximately 500,000 people and the seizure of assets worth more than $15 billion.  

AKP supporters and Gülenists are both closely aligned with the Sunni orthodoxy prevalent among Turkey’s conservative social strata, leading to a significant overlap between the movement and the AKP. Once their alliance fractured, families and close friends often found themselves on opposite sides of a deepening divide. Nearly every AKP supporter has a relative or friend accused of association with the movement. 

However, the shared history and personal entanglements didn't smooth but intensified hostilities. The most radical anti-Gülenists in the AKP ranks are those who were once positioned at the intersection of the AKP and the Gülen movement, and their attacks on the movement are likely motivated by a desire to distance themselves from their past affiliations.  

Gülen's alignment with the Sunni mainstream

Despite its pivotal impact on Turkish history, studies of the Gülen movement often succumb to a simplifying logic of good and bad. Its supporters praise the movement, while critics vilify it. Most works assume the movement is a unique phenomenon in Turkey and even the Islamic world, ignoring how closely it aligns with Turkey’s conservative mainstream in terms of its belief systems, practices and strategies. 

As part of its persecution of the Gülenists, the AKP and the Turkish state sought to portray the movement as un-Islamic and heretical. In 2017, Turkey’s state-run religious authority, the Diyanet, issued a 140-page report claiming that Gülen’s views contradicted Islam, asserting that Hizmet could not be considered an Islamic movement. 

However, Gülen often upheld traditional Sunni beliefs, as confirmed by Egypt’s al-Azhar University, one of the most prestigious scholarly authorities in Sunni Islam, in 2017. In terms of religious practices, Gülenists do not adhere to any rituals or customs that distinguish them from mainstream Sunni Islam. 

Fethullah Gülen’s teachings incorporated minor modernising interpretations. For example, he argued that apostasy was not punishable in a religious sense and that people should be free to join or leave Islam. Regarding domestic violence, he backed the right of women to self-defence and supported affected women in their right to ask for a divorce. Both positions fit well within Turkish societal norms. 

The most controversial issue was Gülen’s relatively flexible stance on veiling. He said that wearing a headscarf was a religious obligation, but argued that women could forgo it to avoid discriminatory policies. This was significant in the Turkish context, where veiled women have been systematically excluded from certain careers by the secular state. Until 2010, veiled women were even banned from studying in universities. 

Even when his teachings diverged from the canon, they were not substantial theological innovations. Overall, Gülen was a charismatic preacher rather than an original thinker.   

But the Gülen movement truly diverges from Turkish conservatives in its geopolitical stance: Gülen has been unabashedly pro-Western, even alienating some other Turkish religious groups by remaining silent on issues such as US-American and Israeli war crimes in the Middle East. 

The spiritual is bureaucratic

Besides their philanthropic projects and education initiatives, the movement strategically placed followers in bureaucratic roles in Turkey, expanding its influence and underscoring political ambition. Some scholars try to explain the Gülenists’ influence through their strategy of building political alliances.  

This strategy, however, is not unique to the Gülenists. Turkey’s religious groups, unlike their counterparts in many Muslim-majority countries, have historically taken a non-confrontational approach to the state. Turkey’s early adoption of electoral democracy provided religious groups with avenues to pursue their goals without challenging state authority. No major Turkish religious group has aimed to establish an Islamic state. Instead, they have sought gradual change by raising a generation of devout individuals who would assume leadership roles.  

In other words, Turkish religious groups have engaged in clientelist relationships with political parties since the 1950s, securing state resources and protection in exchange for electoral support. The Gülen Movement’s alliance with the AKP and its strategy of cadre-building within the bureaucracy followed this long-standing pattern.  

Gülen’s vision was not revolutionary in content but in its reach and scope. His movement took a bold approach by placing followers within the military—a step that most other religious groups avoided due to the military’s strict secularist stance. To bypass secularist barriers, Gülenists adopted concealment tactics, such as not disclosing their ties to the movement and even hiding their religiosity when interacting with secular institutions.  

The presence of Gülenist followers in the military and police was an open secret and was not initially seen as controversial by the religious public. On the contrary, most conservatives viewed it as a counterbalance to the military’s hostility towards the public visibility of religion, while the secularists fiercely opposed it for the same reason. 

What next for Islamic politics in Turkey?

By the late 2000s, when the Gülenist-AKP alliance controlled both political and bureaucratic power, they came closer than ever to realising their “Islamic dream”—the idea that pious governance could resolve societal issues. However, the experiment ultimately had disastrous results. 

The AKP evolved into a corrupt, ultranationalist and authoritarian party centred around Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personality cult, while the Gülen movement‘s aggressive tactics and efforts to seize power led to its alienation from the conservative public. 

Today, amid heavy government repression and pervasive state propaganda, the Gülenists are among Turkey‘s most reviled groups. Both movements, once symbols of a new era, are now discredited—though the AKP still manages to remain in power. Turkey’s religious groups have largely failed to deliver on their promises of moral governance.  

This experience highlights that, for religious movements to address modern challenges, they must move beyond simplistic aims. Instead, a critical reassessment of the nepotistic ties between religious groups and political actors, and of the complex history of state-Islamic relations in Turkey is urgent. Above all, questions should be asked about the state’s outsized role in politics and the tendency of social groups to pursue state capture to avoid repression. 

A genuine rethinking of the interaction between the state and religion and a commitment to the full democratisation of the state is essential. These endeavours demand intellectual rigour and self-criticism, qualities many Turkish religious groups currently lack.  

For now, Turkey’s religious public has taken a convenient path: writing off the Gülenist experience as an aberration while downplaying the Gülen movement’s deep roots in mainstream Turkish Islam. Many Gülenists, meanwhile, claim their suffering is due only to their defiance of Erdoğan’s tyranny. The future of Turkey’s religious movements may ultimately depend on their willingness to take a long look in the mirror.