1.1 Introduction
Islam has been interpreted in various ways by individuals since its birth and Political Islam is one of its interpretations. Political Islam has a long history, and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party—the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi)—is a new face of it in the twenty-first century. The main goals of writing this book are to define political Islam, especially in the Turkish context with respect to the AKP, a political party which has been in power in Turkey since 2002, and to try to understand the nature of conflicts between the two Islamic groups: the AKP and the Gülen Movement, a transnational social movement emerging originally in Turkey in the early 1970s.
The Justice and Development Party (the AKP) and the Gülen movement (aka Hizmet Movement) are religious groups that aim to serve Islam and religious life. Both groups had a relationship for their mutual benefit for a long time. The main issue in common for both groups was the repression and restraining of the rigid secularists within the state institutions and the military. Following the elimination of the ultra-secularists from the state apparatus, the positive relationship between the AKP and the movement has turned into a brutal fight, especially after the corruption investigation against the AKP government and the members of Erdogan’s family in 2013. This book aims to discuss the ideology of political Islamists and its effects on religion and social life. Moreover, it seeks to understand how and why the positive image of the Gülen movement has been changed from a faith-inspired community to a “terrorist organization” by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party, the AKP.
Although the Justice and Development Party (the AKP) has long benefitted greatly from the valuable support of Fethullah Gülen and his followers in the way of democratizing the state and its institutions, the two groups have clearly separated from each other since the 2013 corruption scandals or perhaps a little earlier. 1 This separation has created a massive impact on practicing Muslims as well as on others. Due to the great polarization, hatred and enmity of the ruling Erdogan government against all members of the Gülen movement and its huge effect on society, it has become a necessity to analyze political Islam and its fight against the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have great influence on Turkish people. Both use Islamic concepts to revive Islamic life in Turkey and receive support from Muslims. Erdogan and AKP’s elite come from the late Necmettin Erbakan’s 2 National Outlook Movement 3 (Milli Görüş), the religiopolitical movement which seeks a religious revival through the ideology of political Islam, whereas Fethullah Gülen aims to promote civil Islam among different segments of society without seeking to establish an Islamic state. Gülen refrained from partisan politics and employed a gradualist approach focusing on a bottom-up spiritual progress of society. Thus, the Gülen movement has invested its capital and energy mostly in education and dialogue. In order to avoid confrontation with the secularist Turkish state, the movement stayed away from political Islamists, including the National Outlook.
Looking back to its recent history, the National Outlook Movement pursued a political path of forming political parties that would ultimately establish an Islamic state much like the Muslim Brotherhood 4 tried in Egypt. Erbakan adopted a discourse infused with anti-Western and antisecularist sentiments, thus experiencing military intervention several times. Avoiding the mistakes of the past, the reformists led by Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gül, and Bülent Arınç, ultimately split from the National Outlook Movement and formed the AKP on August 14, 2001.
After decades of rigid secularist rule which constantly threatened the Islamist parties as well as religious groups in Turkey, political power was finally transferred to the political Islamist AKP, the Justice and Development Party, in the 2002 general elections. The ruling AKP has increased its control over the government and consolidated its power further in the succeeding years. At the beginning of its rule, Erdogan’s AKP avoided direct confrontation with the secularist institutions. It claimed to have changed, and described itself as a representative of conservative democrats, rather than Islamists. Nevertheless, the AKP’s Kemalist 5 and secularist rivals in the judiciary, military, and various parts of the state bureaucracy continued to challenge the party. Thus, the Gülen Movement’s support was essential for the AKP to gain control over the state institutions. For the Gülen Movement, aligning with the ruling party was desirable too, because the success of political Islamists enabled the Islamic civil society organizations, including the movement, to grow rapidly with less interference from the secularist elites, particularly during the first two terms of the AKP government. As a matter of fact, Gülen and his followers had been treated negatively and suppressed by the former secularist elites and the military caste, especially in the aftermath of the frequent military interventions and post-modern coups. They were subjected to many antidemocratic sanctions, accusations, and implementations by the secular state for decades. This harsh attitude toward the movement was eased during the AKP rule until 2012. During the February 28, 1997 post-modern coup, 6 a video which leaked to the media showed that Gülen advised his sympathizers to cover their religious identities; otherwise, they would be sacked by the secularist state. In the lawsuit, opened in 2000 at the Ankara State Security Court, Gülen was accused of undermining the secular order. The lawsuit described the Gülen movement as the strongest and most effective Islamic group in Turkey which camouflages its methods with a democratic and moderate image. However, Gülen was cleared of all the accusations through the process of the Turkish judiciary system. The Ankara Criminal Court acquitted Fethullah Gülen of subverting the secular regime in 2006.
Following the institution of European Union (EU)-oriented liberal changes to the Counterterrorism Law on May 5, 2006, Gülen and the movement he inspired were acquitted of the accusations. Similarly, the AKP survived the military’s indirect intervention on April 27, 2007 with the support of the Gülen Movement. Both groups cooperated in the Ergenekon 7 and Sledgehammer (Balyoz) 8 trials to neutralize the tutelary capacity of the secularist military caste. The strategic alliance peaked during the constitutional referendum of September 12, 2010. This referendum altered the composition of the judicial bodies and weakened the power of the ultra-secularists in the judiciary. Gülen publicly encouraged his sympathizers to cast affirmative votes in the referendum and in return, Erdogan offered his gratitude to Gülen and the movement.
As a matter of fact, all three strongholds of the secular establishment in the presidency, military, and judiciary were neutralized in 2010. As a result, the movement was no longer an open target for the repression of the secularist elites during the AKP rule and a grand alliance was formed between them. After all the years of suffering from the suspicious, negative attitudes of the secularist and Kemalist elite, the movement enjoyed the restoration of its honor through the glorification of the AKP elite. Nevertheless, it did not last long. Indeed, it was a great opportunity for the victims of secular oppression to have more power in the state and public life. However, this was also the beginning of conflict between the two groups and termination of the strategic alliance. Although it was easy for both groups to put aside their differences in the ideologies when fighting the common enemy, it was not easy for both to maintain their strategic alliance when the Erdogan government exerted itself to bring all civil society organizations into subjection. The alliance between the AKP and the Gülen movement thus began to fall apart in 2011; it dramatically collapsed in 2013 and finally evolved into an intense fight in the subsequent years. 9
Each group attacked the other using the control they had gained over particular state functions in the preceding years. The AKP used its control over the executive and legislative branches to subjugate the movement; the sympathizers of the Gülen Movement contended against the AKP through their connections in the bureaucracy. It seems the AKP government neutralized the influence of the movement over the state apparatus during its fight against it.
The differences in the ideology, worldview, and interpretation of Islam have eventually caused a dramatic split between the movement and the AKP. Familiarity breeds contempt: the dramatic differences in each group came to be known and the split between them became an inescapable result. This separation turned into one of the fiercest political battles in the history of Turkish politics. 10 The conflict between these two groups has many roots. At the ideological level, the most important divergence is their approach to Islam for the AKP stems from the Muslim Brotherhood tradition or the ideology of political Islam while the Gülen Movement comes from a Sufi and Turkish brand of Islam which has disdained from the Arab world’s Muslim Brotherhood tradition.
Political Islamists see Erdogan as the leader of the Muslim world; hence, they cannot tolerate Gülen sharing the same status with him. Secondly, Erdogan wants to be the president with unrestricted power, with no checks and balances. He is very ambitious to hold all power in his own hands. He perceived Gülen and the movement he inspired as rivals to his goal; thus, he declared them the arch enemy. Through controlling the executive and legislative power in the state, the AKP has been purging the followers of the movement from the state as well ...