The Gülen movement or Hizmet movement () is an international social, educational and Islamic fraternal movement founded by Fethullah Gülen in Turkey in the late 1970s and based in Pennsylvania since 1999. It is institutionalised in estimated 160 countries through STEM focused schools, universities as well as media outlets, interfaith dialogue organisations, charities, finance companies, health clinics that have a combined net worth in the range of 20–50 billion dollars as of 2015. After Gülen's death in October 2024, the New York based Alliance for Shared Values, stated that Gülen had not been actively involved in its operations in the last few years and his work would be carried forward by a group of close associates who had been advising him.
Its followers are mostly Sunni Muslims based on a Nursian theological perspective as reflected in Gülen's religious teachings. Its teachings are considered conservative in Turkey but some have praised the movement as a pacifist, modern-oriented version of Islam, and an alternative to more extreme schools of Islam such as Salafism. On the other hand, it has also been reported to have a "cultish hierarchy" and as being a secretive Islamic sect.
The movement's legal and political status underwent significant transformation beginning in May 2016, when Turkish state authorities declared it as a terrorist organisation. This designation was adopted by select strategically aligned states, namely Pakistan and the Gulf Cooperation Council. However, the Gülen movement is not recognised as a terrorist organisation by democratic supranational organisations like the European UnionEU says needs concrete evidence from Turkey to deem Gulen network as terrorist, Tulay Karadeniz, Tuvan Gumrukcu, November 30th 2017, Reuters and countries like the United States, the United Kingdom,Repression or recovery? UK's relations with Turkey, Parliament.uk, 25 March 2017 Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand due to lack of credible evidence. These countries continue to accept refugee claims from its followers.
Following the 2016 coup attempt, President Erdoğan immediately blamed the Gülen movement, labeling the event a "gift from God" to justify a state purge. This resulted in the immediate arrest of thousands of soldiers and judges, the dismissal of 150,000 government employees, and the suspension or license revocation of over 20,000 educators allegedly linked to the movement.
Eight days after the coup attempt on July 23, 2016, the Turkish government had shut down 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities, 19 trade unions, 15 universities, and 35 medical institutions allegedly linked to the Gülen movement, seizing properties valued at $12 billion. Nearly 3,000,000 citizens of Turkey were investigated for terrorism between 2016 and 2024, and 511,000 were arrested for alleged links to the Gülen movement. According to the historian Michael Rubin, the coup attempt was staged to serve Erdoğan's interests, "to allow a dictator to consolidate power".
Gülen condemned the coup, denied involvement, and called for an international commission to investigate the failed coup, saying he would accept its findings if found guilty.
Membership
A true count of the membership is unknown since the movement is not a centralised or formal organisation with membership rosters, but rather a set of numerous, loosely organised networks of people inspired by Gülen.Helen Rose Ebaugh, The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam (Springer, 2009), p. 46. Estimates of the size of the movement vary, with one estimate by Tempo in 1997 stating that between 200,000 supporters and 4 million people are influenced by Gülen's ideas, and another source stating that Gülen has "hundreds of thousands of supporters". The membership of the movement consists primarily of students, teachers, businessmen, academics, journalists and other professionals. Some well known people who are or were affiliated with the movement include former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and soccer star Hakan Şükür.
Organisation The movement states that it is based on moral values and advocacy of universal access to education, civil society, tolerance and peace. The emphasis among participants is to perform "ministry" (which is the meaning of the Turkish word "hizmet") as arising from individuals' personal commitments to righteous imperatives. Along with hizmet, the movement, which has no official name, is termed the Gülen movement or cemaat (the latter also used to describe participants in Sufi orders, meaning "congregation", "community", or "assembly").
The movement's structure has been described as a flexible organisational network.Portrait of Fethullah Gülen, A Modern Turkish-Islamic Reformist
Lay clergy (Imam-Mullah-Shaykh) Akin to Turkey's Sufi tariqas are lay religious orders which have been banned in Turkey since 1925. Movement schools and businesses organize locally and link themselves into informal networks. Each local Gülen movement school and community has a person designated its "informal" prayer leader (imam). In Turkey, an imam is state-sponsored. In the Gülen movement, this individual is a layman who serves for a stint within this volunteer position, lay clergy. His identity is kept confidential, generally only purposely made known to those with close connections to those participating in decision-making and coordinating councils within the local group. Above a grouping of such "secret" (not-publicly acknowledged) imams is another such volunteer leader. This relationship tree continues on up the ladder to the nation-level imam and to individuals who consult with Gülen himself. These individuals closest to Gülen, having degrees from theology schools, are offhandedly referred to within the movement as mullahs. Gülen's position, as described in the foregoing, is analogous to that of a shaykh (master) of a Sufi tariqa. Unlike with traditional tariqas, no-one makes pledges of any sort, upon joining the Gülen movement; one becomes a movement participant simply by working with others to promote and effect the movement's objectives of education and service.
The quoted a German lawyer that called the organisation "more powerful than the Illuminati" and "not transparent as opposed to the claims", and reported that the organisation tried to reorganise in the Swabia region of Germany.
Gülen died in Pennsylvania in October 2024 after previously being treated in a hospital. The New York–based Alliance for Shared Values, a nonprofit linked to the Gülen movement, stated that Gülen had not been actively involved in the movement in recent years and that his work would be carried forward by a group of close associates who had advised him for decades.
Associated organisations Gülen and the Gülen movement are technology-friendly, work within current market and commerce structures, and are savvy users of modern communications and public relations.
Its members have founded schools, universities, hospitals, an employers' association, charities, real estate trusts, student organisations, radio and television stations, and newspapers.
Hizmet-affiliated foundations and businesses were estimated to be worth $20–50 billion in 2015.
Schools
Schools associated with the Gülen movement can be found in countries with large populations of people of Turkish descent as well as in predominantly non-Turkish Muslim countries where they provide families with an alternative to madrasa education. The schools are open to both Turkish migrants and citizens of host countries, and they avoid pushing for a religious agenda. Many alumni of Gülen schools pursue elite careers in diplomacy and international institutions. There were about 1000 Gülen schools in Turkey that an estimated 1.2 million Turks passed through (Including many of Erdoğan's relatives). However, after the attempted coup in 2016, all of the schools were shut down and banned by law.
In 2009, it was estimated that Gülen linked schools around the world enrolled more than 2 million students. Estimates of the number of schools and educational institutions but it appears there were about 300 Gülen Movement schools in Turkey and over 1,000 schools worldwide at that time. Later reporting by the Wall Street Journal estimated around 150 schools just in the United States, "ranging from networks in Texas, Illinois and Florida to stand-alone academies in Maryland". Although there is no formal networking of all the schools, collectively they form one of the largest collections of charter schools in the United States.
Most Gülen movement associated schools are private schools or charter schools. The curricula of the schools vary from country to country but they generally follow a secular mixture of Turkish and local curricula with an emphasis on science and math. A 2008 article in the New York Times said that in Pakistan "they encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set examples in lifestyle and prayer", and described the Turkish schools as offering a gentler approach to Islam that could help reduce the influence of extremism. However, in America, "there is no indication the American charter network has a religious agenda in the classroom", according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Two American professors at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Temple University wrote that "these schools have consistently promoted good learning and citizenship, and the Hizmet movement is to date an evidently admirable civil society organisation to build bridges between religious communities and to provide direct service on behalf of the common good". Professor Joshua Hendrick of Loyola University Maryland, who studies the movement, said that Gülen himself "does not have a direct hand in operating" the charter schools and it was reported that Gülen has never visited the schools. Alp Aslandoğan, director of the Alliance for Shared Values said that the schools are independent yet indirectly tied to the Gülen movement on the "intellectual or inspirational level". Republished as
In Europe there has been some pushback to the establishment of schools associated with the movement. In Georgia, the Georgian Labour Party protested schools opening on the basis that they "aim to spread Turkish culture and fundamentalist religious ideas". In the Netherlands, there were concerns that the schools would promote "anti-integrative behavior" however an investigation in 2010 by the AIVD intelligence organization found that the schools did not represent a threat. In the United States there have been allegations and investigations into money-laundering and kickbacks at charter schools connected to the Gülen movement which receive federal financial support. Schools in Texas were accused of sending school funds to Gülen associated organizations by prioritizing construction contracts with Turkish expatriate-owned construction companies over more economical bids, according to reporting by The New York Times in 2011. Folwell Dunbar, an official at the Louisiana Department of Education, accused İnci Akpınar, vice president of one such construction company, of offering him a $25,000 bribe to keep quiet about troubling conditions at the Abramson Science and Technology School in New Orleans which was operated by the Pelican Foundation.
As of 2015 there were over 100 K-12 schools in Africa, including schools in Morocco, Mali, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Congo, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Egypt, and Angola.
The movement held an annual international youth performing arts contest called the International International Festival of Language and Culture since 2003 bringing students from Gulen movement schools together.
Media organisations