Portraits from Russia, Turkey and America

In the recent Turkish-Russian Dialogue program at Moscow State University, two Turkish research fellows claimed that the Turkish government, with American guidance, was acting against Russian interests in Central Asia, that Turkish businessmen and the schools they sponsor do not contribute to mutual relations in the region and that Turkey is accused of importing Islamic influence there.

However, the views of these two academics were challenged and severely criticized by Russian scholars and by the Turkish ambassador to Russia, who has worked there since 1976. Offering substantial historical evidence — sociopolitical, educational, economic and religious — Ambassador Halil Akinci noted that the two panelists were mistaken and that they had not yet visited any of the schools concerned. He suggested that they visit the schools together.

Emilyanova Nadejda Mihaylovna, from the Oriental Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, maintained that the claims of the two Turkish academics were politically biased and that they were not knowledgeable about how such schools have contributed to relations between societies and countries. Mihail Meyer, the head of the Asian-African Studies Center at Moscow State University, noted that the two Turkish academics spoke without knowing the importance and contributions of Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen and Gülen-inspired institutions to dialogue.

In Turkey a neo-nationalist group recently claimed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his wife and President Abdullah Gül were Zionists serving a Zionist conspiracy in Turkey. Deputy Canan Aritman, from the Republican People's Party (CHP), has now claimed that President Gül is supporting an apology campaign for the suffering and death that occurred during the Armenian displacement in 1915 because, according to her, the president's mother is Armenian. A columnist in the Cumhuriyet daily wrote that Gülen encouraged the establishment of high schools and an international university in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq because he was Kurdish. Does the columnist also think that Gülen encourages people to establish educational and cultural institutions in Africa because he is African, or in Japan because he is Japanese, or in Taiwan because he is Taiwanese? Or is he Mexican, Dutch, English or, in short, a citizen of more than 100 countries?

Very recently there was a breakfast and morning discussion between a university dean, the head of a center, two professors from American University, a top institution of higher learning in Washington, D.C., an international columnist and Gülen. The American scholars put forward a great range of questions. They asked about interfaith dialogue, the names and attributes of God in Islam, how Gülen movement participants internalize sincerity and generosity and how the participants can move from project to project and avoid clashing with, undermining or backbiting one another for worldly position, passions and expectations. They asked whether it was possible to inculcate such virtues in other faith communities and, in this sense, which Islamic qualities can also be valid and applicable to other communities. They wondered why Muslims are portrayed as despising and ignoring the world and neglecting its betterment, as if working to the detriment of everyone else in order to acquire paradise, especially in the case of ideological radicals. Gülen answered all of those questions very succinctly and thoroughly.

The academics expressed their pleasure at meeting such a profound scholar. On behalf of their university president, they officially invited Gülen to their university to make a speech for the start of the academic year at the beginning of the semester, to meet and speak with the entire faculty or to at least have a roundtable question-and-answer session so that their faculty leaders might benefit from his knowledge and wisdom. Gülen did not accept any praise, compliments or attribution of any success or services to himself, but expressed his wish to continue to live away from the crowds. He added that his ongoing medical treatment does not permit travel or being among so many people.

In Turkish we say that these people "have not eaten their wisdom with bread and cheese." That is, they are not idiots; they have not destroyed their wisdom with their appetites. It seems some Turkish academics need to look more carefully at what they are eating as a side dish.