Turkish Islamism's Complete Transformation

I am in Washington, D.C., to present a paper at a conference, titled "Islam in the Age of Global Challenges: Alternative Perspectives of the Gülen Movement," organized by Georgetown University and the Rumi Forum. Conference organizers say that globalization implies the expansion of challenges to all of us: escalating interstate and intrastate conflicts, poverty and ignorance as more than a billion people are still illiterate. To contribute to the solution of these global problems is not only required by altruism but also even by personal interest. That is why the organizers say that they chose global challenges as the main theme of this conference, with a special emphasis on the perspectives of the Gülen movement toward the solutions to these problems. The movement has organized interfaith dialogue activities to avoid religious conflicts, educational institutions to fight ignorance and charities and business associations to defeat poverty. Therefore, it provides an intriguing case that can open new discussions to diverse aspects of the global challenges and their solutions.

The main premise of my paper is that the Gülen movement has been the most influential factor that helped the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) leaders to develop a more tolerant normative framework and to eventually jettison their Islamism. With the increased international prominence of Turkey and its successful and internationally respected AK Party government, academia's attention has focused on the Turkish Islamist experience.

Turkey is already seen as an almost unique case as far as Islam/state secularism/democracy relations are concerned, but the recent transformation of Turkish Islamism coupled with the global turmoil in the post-Sept. 11 world has made the Turkish case much more important.

There are good historical reasons arising from the Ottoman experience of secularism and democracy. Turkish Islamism has always differed from the other Islamist experiences. Democracy, loyalty to the state and nationalism are not anathema to Turkish Islamists, akin to the first Islamists in history, the Young Ottomans. These reasons have also facilitated the Turkish Islamists' evolution towards post-Islamism. Islamic groups' both physical and discursive interaction is a major factor in Turkish Islamism's normative transformation. The former Islamists were directly and normatively influenced by the new Anatolian elite, the Gülen movement, its schools and media and the post-Islamist intellectuals. It is, of course, difficult to establish a causal relationship between two social phenomena, but one can underscore correlations. My main hypothesis is that the Gülen movement has been the most influential factor in the normative transformation of the former Islamists' mental frameworks and their religio-political worldviews.

In addition to having been influential in Turkey, Gülen's understanding of Islam, one can expect, will also be influential in the wider Muslim world in parallel to the increasing influence of both Turkey and the movement on a global scale. Major developments in Turkey have already been followed with considerable interest by the Muslim media, thinkers and activists. The movement also increased its activities in the non-Turkish Muslim world. In addition to operating several schools in major Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, it has recently been opening schools, hospitals and universities in Africa and wherever permitted in the Middle East.