The Language of the Gülenists Vol. 1

The words behind the religious group

Fetullah Gülen delivering the so-called ‘Süleymaniye sermons’ in 1991.

If you’ve been following Turkey for a while, you’ll have heard of the Gülenists. They’re a religious group that used to be a powerful part of the broader AK Party government, but the two went through a long and bitter schism since starting in the early 2010s, just about ten years ago.

I’m 36, and when I was a kid, the Gülenists were immensely powerful and hard-wired into the Islamist political scene. In a religious neighborhood, everyone knew people who were with the group. You’d see stacks of their newspapers at the entrance stairwells to apartment blocks. Now there’s a generation of 20-something Islamists who don’t have those memories. They think of the Gülenists the way Anglo-Americans think of the Nazis: the incarnation of the enemy.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the English-language literature on the Gülenists is still fairly poor. I Googled around and checked Will Armstrong’s excellent Turkey Book Podcast, and I couldn’t find any serious books on the Gülenists. They’re either sponsored by the group itself or its enemies around the Erdoğan regime. An exception might be Caroline Tee’s book, but I can’t say I’ve had a chance to read it.

I’m not an expert and can’t hope to provide a full account here of course, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the Gülenists through some of their language. In this first post, I won’t go into their politics at all, but rather discuss some of their core attributes in their formative years. I tried to arrange the terms chronologically, so that it gives uninitiated readers a story from start to finish. I hope that initiated readers will also learn new things.

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Cemaat: this is the Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic جماعة (In English “jamaat”). It is based on جَمَعَ, which I believe means “gathered,” making “jamaat” literally a “gathering.” There’s other words for “gathering” in Turkish, but if one is using “cemaat” it is usually in reference to a gathering for religious purposes. A “cami cemaati” is a mosque congregation. If someone shows up for Friday prayer, sees big crowds, and says “the cemaat in this neighborhood is good” it means that he’s impressed by the degree of turnout.

There is another kind of “cemaat” though, and that’s a religious order, sometimes also referred to as a tarikat (“tariqa” meaning “path”). In Turkey, these often have Sufi origins, but have become more orthodox over time, or at least as orthodox as such things can be. They’re groups organized around a charismatic leader who’s often believed to have special connections to the divine.

The late sheikh of the Menzil order Abdulbaki El Hüseyini. In Islamic tradition, the rose symbolizes the prophet Muhammed. Sheikhs often claim special insight into prophetic wisdom.

Some of them go back centuries, or at least the tradition they claim to belong to, like the Nakşibendi order, does. Examples are the Cerrahi and Menzil. These religious orders often got involved in the businesses of their adherents, so at the larger scale, they could be involved in specific sectors of the local economy.

I personally think that cemaat are simply another layer of exceptionalism. On the large scale, Abrahamic religions are about being special. Most of humanity is doomed to eternal suffering, but you are among a group of people who have been extended a chance at eternal life. It’s present in Judaism and Christianity, as well as in Islam. They all have their special ways of invoking it. Being the chosen tribe, existing beyond laws, following the last prophet, etc. Either way, for some people, it isn’t enough after a while. There’s many Muslims, and being one of them no longer makes them feel very distinguished.

Enter the sheikh. He has a special connection to the prophet, he knows things that normal people don’t know. He also offers you a hierarchy you can climb, feeling more special every time you get closer to him. This makes you feel special. You’re excited again about your religious practice. It has come alive in a way you always wished it would. Now when you’re walking down the street, you get the feeling that you know something most people don’t. You’re on the fast track to heaven. While everyone else is stuck in metaphysical traffic, you’re flying high on a VIP helicopter.

That sort of thing can get very strange very fast. People develop esoteric communal practices, pool their resources, and act differently towards outsiders.

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The Cemaat: but we’re not talking about any old cemaat here. Turkish doesn’t have definitive articles, but you can often get from the context and intonation if someone is talking about a cemaat or the cemaat. Especially from the 1990s on, if you just said something like “that business is cemaat-owned” you didn’t have to specify which cemaat you were talking about. Among all the existing cemaat, one had grown so big and powerful that they had become “the cemaat” in the country’s collective imagination.

The “Gülen cemaati” as it used to be referred to, was relatively new, and was the continuation of a tradition set by Said Nursî, a Kurdish mystic, often believed to be a polymath of incredible intellectual abilities. He is sometimes referred to by the titled “Bedüizzaman” meaning “the best of his time.” Nursî supported the war of independence, and like many Islamists, opposed the Kemalist regime. After the died, his movement split into several branches, forming a family of orders collectively referred to as the “Nurcu,” roughly meaning “adherents of the light.” One of those orders, under the leadership of Fetullah Gülen, separated from the rest. From the 1970s on, they grew very fast and came to be referred to as the “Gülen cemaati.”

By the 1990s, the Gülenists were the cemaat, and their power reached across the country, and extended to a network of schools and businesses spanning the globe.