Photo credit/Selahattin Sevi
It was a Sunday, late afternoon, October 20, 2024. I got a WhatsApp notification on my mobile screen. I tapped on the icon and entered my password to view. “Fethullah Gulen passed today,” read a message from a Turkish friend. My head went wandering in the clouds. The point at issue was not that he was dead. Far from it. He was a sick man for a long time. As a Muslim cleric, he knew this. He was mortal. He had to ‘taste’ death. But he was lucky. He even had already crossed the age mentioned in the holy books (70 years). He was 83. What a blessing!
What troubled my mind was that, after Gülen’s death, there are those who would celebrate. Who could these be and why? There are those who would be simply mourning. This is natural. There are those who, despite the mourning, would celebrate his life—the lucky ones. Lastly, what does his death mean for the country of his birth, Turkey, its people, and the rest of the world? Was this the beginning of an end to the Hizmet (Service) Movement?
Celebrating Gulen’s death?
Normally, it is inhuman for any human being to celebrate another person’s death. It is inconceivable as it is wild, depicting an uncouth behavior of a human being. Empathy, let alone, one must, at least, pretend to sympathize with the bereaved relatives and friends and appreciate the prevailing environment in society. In some African traditions, ‘celebrating’ anyone’s death is permissible only to grandchildren. The philosophy behind this is that family members in this category ‘reserve’ the right to celebrate the age and life of their deceased grandparents. Their grief is believed to go no farther than the flesh.
Could Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (70) have decided to act like the African grandchildren over the death of Gulen (83), a former ally who was just like his elder brother? Erdogan went ahead and condemned Gulen before his burial by declaring his death to the world as “dishonorable,” likening Gulen to a “demon in human flesh…” He charged that he died without being held accountable, “but they will not be able to escape divine justice.” That is coming from Erdogan. Even if it were true, it is not proper to deliver it in a manner that amounts to flogging a dead horse. For what? Does Erdogan believe in divine justice?
Of course, Erdogan had little (or no) choice to maintain his cause. How could he give the fallen Turkish son due praise when he had held him responsible for the July 2016 coup, which the world has come to know was actually his own brew? What could he tell the Turkish younger generation, whom he has managed to make believe in his stories about Gulen and the Hizmet Movement? Dictators have one quality in common: to keep in power, they have to find a common enemy. One such enemy for dictator Erdogan has been Gulen and all those who share or are seen to share his ideals and put his ideas into practice.
Al-Jazeera quoted a 29-year-old lawyer as saying, “I’m satisfied because I believe Gulen is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. So, in a way, there’s some sense of relief. The second reason I’m satisfied is that his death might lead to some normalization in Turkey regarding political issues. The coup affected our institutions, the Constitution, and the rule of law. It changed the way Turkey operates.” When Gulen went into self-exile in the US (1999), this ‘learned’ young Turk was four years old. And when the coup took place, he was 21. Chances are that most of what he knows about the coup could be based on official propaganda. One can imagine the knowledge status of the majority of the people in rural Turkey about Gulen. There have been cases of families falling apart because some members were taken for being pro-Gulen. This, of course, is positive for the authoritarian divide et impera (divide and rule) principle.
Who was this Gulen?
My knowledge about and understanding of Gulen essentially came from Said Nursi’s writings and lifestyle. Nursi classified Turkey’s enemies as three in the order of Ignorance, Poverty, and Disunity. Gulen himself has extensively written and acted on the eradication of these enemies in and outside Turkey. Some other people, Dr. Jon Pahl in particular, have analyzed the life of Gulen, painting him as a Muslim scholar based in Pennsylvania in the US… and who matters to the world… through the Hizmet (Service) Movement.
Dr. Pahl builds a case of the family being a sacred school like a mosque. He packages Gulen’s controversial choice of celibacy to show “how it is possible to conquer the profound sense of loneliness and alienation experienced in an alien and hostile environment.” He classifies this as “the art of being a stranger in one’s own land… living a life of the hereafter.”
Gulen’s great role model, with an ingredient of self-criticism, paved the way for human empowerment and social betterment through the establishment of a movement of service, with everybody participating in their own way. A generation of trustees has developed, elevating the charity pillar of Islam to an act of worship. The result is what sociologists view as social bonding capital that sees empathy-driven education, business, and health social enterprises come on board to provide a final blow to Said Nursi’s identified enemies of Turkey through the Hizmet Movement, and try to establish a new power balance of justice, love, respect, and equality among people—all for the good of Turkey, its people, and the rest of the world.
