The Gülen Movement in Azerbaijan

The Gülen Movement in Azerbaijan By Fuad Aliyev ince gaining independence in 1991, post-Soviet azerbaijan has been experiencing a broad-based Islamic revival shaped by both home- grown as well as foreign influences. The clash of these influences has generated an “Islamization” contest for the souls of the country’s population, the majority of whom are Shiite as well as ethnic Turks. This competition Shas unfolded between Shiite and Sunni preachers as well as between different Sunni movements, including traditional Azeri Shafei movements, Salafi Khanbali (Hambali) streams that have been “imported” from the Arab world, and Turkish Hanafi activists and organizations. Of all the Sunni movements in Azerbaijan, the most influential is the Turkish Nurcular network that is now led by its dominant offshoot known widely as the “Gülen” or “Hizmet” movement. Named for its founder, the Turkish Muslim preacher Fethul- lah Gülen, the movement is a faith-based educational network that is enormously well- resourced and highly active internationally, especially in the Turkic world that stretch- es from Turkey into Central Asia. In Azerbaijan, the Gülen movement has succeeded in reaching out to a diverse population, but especially to urban elites. It is different from other Islamic movements in that it promotes its religious teachings not through outright proselytization, but discreetly through its network of secular educational institutions, social media and business associations. Moreover, the movement has not become directly involved in the hotly contested disputes over the place of religion in post-Soviet Azerbaijan 90 ■ CURRENT TRENDS IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY / VOL. 14 that have been generated by the country’s religious revival. Whereas Azeri secularists, Islamic activists and liberal human rights defenders have all traded barbs over Islam and “Muslim rights” including whether the hijab can be worn in public spaces, the Gülen movement has largely remained silent on these matters. Because of the Hizmet movement’s political quietism and its appearance of secularism, Sunni Islamists have repeatedly criticized it as “un-Islamic,” for introducing “innova- tions” (bida) into Islam, and for ignoring the problems that religious Muslims face. Al- ternatively, both Azeri secularists and Shia religious activists have accused the Gülen network of promoting a hidden Turkish-Sunni Islamist political agenda, of serving as political agents for Turkey, and of promoting Sunnism against Azerbaijan’s native Shi- ism. Such widely divergent appraisals have given rise to many questions and considerable suspicion about the Gülen movement and its aims. What makes the movement so different from the other Islamic movements operating in Azerbaijan? What is the Gülen movement’s agenda in Azerbaijan, and what is its relationship to affiliated Nurcular associations back home in Turkey and elsewhere internationally? Will the movement and its growing network continue to integrate with secular Azeri society, or is it following a hidden agenda with the aim of refashioning Azerbaijani society? The Movement Today the gülen or hizmet movement is a transnational network of institutions and individuals who follow the teachings of the Turkish Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen. Gülen himself is a follower of Said Nursi (1878-1960), a towering figure in modern Turk- ish Islam who established the Nurcular revivalist movement in post-Ottoman Turkey of 1920s. Although Nursi never directly involved himself in political life, he was a hugely influential religious thinker. A fierce opponent of the secularist ideology of Mustafa Ke- mal Ataturk, Nursi was officially deemed an enemy of the state in 1935 and spent the next eleven years in prison.1 Evidently, the Kemalist authorities felt threatened by Nur- si’s teachings and by the semi-secret, underground network of obedient followers that the preacher came to lead. Known as the Nur Talebeleri, or “followers of light,” Nursi’s followers formed themselves into a hierarchical organization that resembled the structure of a traditional Sufi order and soon became popularly known as the “Nurcu Movement.” Nursi’s teachings are collected in his book, the Risaleyi-Nur. After his death, Nursi’s closest disciples in Turkish cities began to convene courses to study his philosophy. Soon, the movement became split between several of Nursi’s disciples, including teachers like Hüsrev Altınba¸sak, Mehmet Kayalar, Hulusi Yahyagil, Zübeyr Gündüzalp, THE GÜLEN MOVEMENT IN AZERBAIJAN ■ 91 Mustafa Sungur and Mehmet Kurdoglu. These divisions have persisted with time. In 1950, the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed a resolution to rehabilitate the literary heritage of Said Nursi, and this thereby effectively legalized the publication and translation of his works and the movement they inspired. However, official sus- picions of the movement remained. In the 1970s, Gülen Haci Effendi, a charismatic imam from the city of Izmir, began preaching Nursi’s ideas and calling for a revival of Islam in Turkey. Initially, the young imam had supported Zübeyr Gündüzalp’s Yeni Asiya movement, but Gülen ultimately broke with that movement, claiming it had become too involved in politics.2 Gülen’s missionary outreach soon attracted a loyal following that began to constitute itself into a close-knit, vertically-structured organization devoted to the study of Nursi’s ideas as well as Gülen’s written works. Since the early 1970s, this movement has formed a unique network within the broader Nurcular movement that is distin- guished from other followers of Nursi’s teachings, the majority of whom are now led by another Nurcular teacher, Mustafa Sungur. According to various experts, what makes the Gülen movement different from other Nurcular movements is its clear hierarchical structure, its strict internal discipline, the secrecy of its laws, its openness to capitalism and avowedly pro-business stance, and its focus on working through media associations and businesses to develop the movement.3 The rapid emergence of this network in secularist Turkey in the 1970s aroused a great deal of suspicion. Turkish authorities began to scrutinize Gülen’s activities, and he subsequently moved to the U.S. where he now lives. His movement, however, re- mains enormously influential in his native Turkey and abroad. Through its business connections, the movement has accumulated enormous financial resources that it uses to support its social activities and public outreach in Turkey and elsewhere around the world.4 One analysis that drew from Turkish media resources showed that the Hizmet movement experienced a sharp increase in its total operating capital be- ginning in the mid-1980s: today, the movement’s total worth is estimated to be more than $50 billion and to comprise about 30 percent of the Turkish economy.5 Worldwide, the Gülen network includes branches in 115 countries and features over 500 businesses, 6 universities, over 700 schools, 14 journals, the widely read news- paper Zaman (“Time”), the global Samanyolu TV channel (STV), and two radio chan- nels.6 According to a survey by the Turkish company Konsensus, Fethullah Gülen’s movement is now the second largest religious community in Turkey after the Alevis.7 Moreover, according to the High Command of the Armed Forces of Turkey, the num- ber of Gülen’s followers reaches as high as 4 million people in Turkey.8 In Turkey, the Gülen movement, as with some other Nurcu movements, is a well- structured, hierarchical organization. Thus, a typical Turkish city-level cell usually 92 ■ CURRENT TRENDS IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY / VOL. 14 consists of the following levels: shagirdlar (students), uy imams (groups of five students and their leaders), semt imams (an association of fives on the basis of the urban district or educational institution and their leaders), and bolge imams (head of district level.)9 Students are recruited and controlled at a local level by Nurcu abis (brothers) and by ablas (sisters). According to former members of this network, the movement possesses its own security service that is tasked with rooting out moles and agents of national intelligence and law enforcement services.10 The movement keeps a data- base of all its members, and the training of each new recruit emphasizes the need to exercise discretion in revealing their involvement with the Gülen network. Students are additionally instructed to respect and obey the network’s leadership.11 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the movement began to focus its international religious outreach and networking efforts in the newly formed republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and among the Muslim populations located in the Russian Federation.12 Like many other Islamic revivalist movements, the Hizmet movement met with formidable resistance in the secularist environments of post-Soviet countries. In part because of this, the movement has tended to conduct its international outreach in a secretive fashion, much as it did when it first emerged in Kemalist Turkey. Today, some researchers claim that because of governmental scrutiny in Russia and the CIS, the Gülen movement has formed a transnational network of semi-underground cells that are far larger than most estimates.13 The secrecy surrounding the movement has aroused considerable suspicion about its activities and ultimate goals. According to Mikhail Davidov, the movement’s underground network operates as a sort of intelligence service that collects informa- tion on political, economic, confessional and other

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