What is his concept of culture? What are the sources of Turkish cultural heritage?
Fethullah Gülen sees culture as,
… the whole of social and ethical disciplines of conduct which a nation produces in history, and over time makes it into a dimension of national existence or subconscious heritage.[1]
According to this understanding, although it appears as universal in terms of some of its fundamental features, it is obvious that in every society or geography a different culture is predominant. Of course, this difference is an influential factor, to a great extent, on systems of thought. For this reason, we can consider an individual’s thought, bound by a culture, as his expression of himself within a certain framework of reference.
It is possible to define a culture as ... a given nation’s displaying, in its entirety or partially, its own ethical values, considerations of doctrines, its thoughts about existence, universe, and humanity, its postures vis-à-vis the social and political behavior, the disciplines of behaviors, within the framework of national thinking and national sentiments, all the things which occur within its history like ideas, arts, tradition, conventions and customs.
In our cultural system, the relationships of human–God–Universe ... is the most fundamental principle and all mental, ideational, and concrete action take place according to this relationship. The modern European logic, that it is altogether a Greek heritage, relates all its thoughts to human, things, and events; therefore either it does not take into consideration the reality of the divine at all or considers it as a secondary matter to the former ... It dwells on only the results of events or facts in practice and relates everything the events and things.[2]
With this in mind, Fethullah Gülen must be aware that Islamic societies, in general, and Turkey, in particular, did not go through a process of bottom up (soft) secularization, by going through the Reformation and the Renaissance. If such a historical process did not take place, the approach Fethullah Gülen refers to would have been carried through Christian thought from the Middle Ages into the modern times. If the reverse had taken place, what he says about the Christian world would have taken place in our society. And this is only the natural result of mutual influences of the systems of faith and social life on each other. Fethullah Gülen must have shared this evaluation assessment when he says:
We have to interpret and assess our culture carefully not only in order to open up to our region but also in terms of opening up in our life of thought and establishing a durably and firm bridge between us and the civilized world. In other words, on behalf of our nation, in order to construct a firmer, more cohesive and coherent, and more durable understanding of a culture, we have to take the ethical and moral values belonging to yesterday, today, and tomorrow, without sacrificing one at the expense of another, and make a synthesis of all of them as a dynamic whole.[3]
According to Fethullah Gülen, while aiming at development, this synthesis has to secure the continuity within change and development. He also makes an interesting expression, “… cultural times, being different from what we know as time, it would be more appropriate to call it above time.”[4] With this he is offering a conceptualization which always changes but carries the continuity in it, while always benefitting from different reference points. And this makes his approach autonomous from others and original. Because of this, Fethullah Gülen’s system is able to include different concepts, paths of thought, viewpoints, understanding of art, and ethical values, and produce a new synthesis from them.
Were we able to accomplish as a society what he is trying to achieve? The judgment of Fethullah Gülen is categorical and impartial:
We are a nation, which along with so much adventures in innovations, could not establish our own ethical system based on our own national culture; could not develop and systematize our own metaphysical thoughts; could not display an artistic vision which would reflect our internal world in terms of God, universe and human realities, and develop an educational system according to our own spiritual roots.
Unfortunately, we have dried up those blessed resources of life with our own hands that had sustained us as a nation in all history, and we oriented ourselves to importation. So much so that, we have confused the minds altogether with the strange understanding of a nationhood which we tried to enforce on the people the things we brought from all corners of the world, that strange philosophy of life and a strange understanding of art. We have extinguished our own cultural torches which had been burning for several millennia, and submitted to the darkness like the bats?[5]
Fethullah Gülen’s observations, along with his assessment that we cannot hold on and we are swept by the currents, make it easy to grasp the secrets of Turkey’s backwardness.
Nevertheless, Fethullah Gülen offers hope and the remedy:
Right now what we need is not this or that person; this or that philosophy, but a magical prescription which would take us to the acquirement of our soul that we had lost, which would save us from the depths of the anaphor of confusion and bring back the love for a new truth within the framework of our own understanding, our own customs, a new conception of science and depth of thought. This prescription consists of our own meta-understandings which would be filtered through the prism of our national life of hundreds of years ... related to our philosophy of life and the reality of human–God–universe, our own voice and breath. And I think that until we find the values that we lost, it will not be possible to find our manner of speech, and free ourselves from the deviation of thoughts.[6]
How can we accomplish the great leap forward for which he yearns? How can we construct the civilizational project? Fethullah Gülen offers a national renaissance where the language is Turkish. According to him,
It will have been accomplished through the integration of Turkey with the Turkic world and the Western world, through the generations to be raised in the USA and Australia ... by making the Turkish language as a language of the world.[7]
Since language is another dimension of the culture, Turkish, which is spoken in many parts of the world anyway, should become a universal language. According to Fethullah Gülen, the future will be an age of science and communication or oration in concrete form—the signs of it are already apparent. For that reason, language is as important as science for nations in the future, in their development and in finding a place in the rapidly globalizing world. In order for Turkish to accomplish such a mission, primarily the men of literature and thinkers have serious responsibilities.
[1] Fethullah Gülen 2010g, 85.
[2] Ibid., 85–86.
[3] Ibid., 88.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Fethullah Gülen 2010e, 171–172.
[6] Ibid., 172.
[7] Fethullah Gülen 2007c, 170.
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