Martin van Bruinessen, Pious Muslims as a bridge between Turkey and the West: The amazing case of the

Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe

Foreword to: smail a lar, From Symbolic Exile to Physical Exile: Turkeys Imam Hatip Schools, the Emergence of a Conservative Counter-Elite, and its Knowledge Migration to Europe, Amsterdam University Press, 2013 (pp. 5-21).

Pious Muslims as a bridge between Turkey and the West: The amazing case of the Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe
Martin van Bruinessen

Paradoxes of Turkeys secularism Turkeys particular form of secularism has given rise to a number of surprising paradoxes, one of which constitutes the subject of this study. Pious Muslims, who were prevented from entering Turkish universities by a secular elite fearful of losing its control of state and society, have been sending their best and brightest to European (and American) universities, thus contributing to the emergence of a well-educated counter elite with an international outlook. Turkeys secularism or laiklik after the French lacit, which constituted its source of inspiration is not based on the idea of a separation of the political and religious spheres, but rather on the rejection of all religious authority independent of the state. The founders of the Republic intended to liberate the population from the influence of Sufi sheikhs and traditional ulama, banning Sufi orders and replacing the medreses (traditional Islamic schools) by universal education in modern, Western-type schools. However, their successors recognized that society needed some form of religious education and religious knowledge, and rather than relegating those to the private sphere, the state has consistently made sure it kept a close control of religious education and knowledge. While on the one hand the main institutions of the old religious establishment were abolished the office of the sheikh al-islam, the religious courts, and medreses of all levels all were closed in 1924, and the Sufi orders and saints shrines followed in 1925 the secular Republic soon established its own institutions in order to take care of the religious needs of its subjects. Since the political liberalization that began in the 1950s, the involvement of the state in matters of religion has gradually become more and more massive. Through the Directorate for Religious Affairs, Diyanet, the Republic controls all major mosques in the country and is the formal employer of prayer leaders (imam), preachers (hatip, vaiz) and other mosque personnel. Even most saints shrines have been reopened and placed under the supervision of Diyanet which is supposed to keep the expressions of popular Islam also in check. In September 1980 the armed forces, the chief guardians of Turkeys secular order, carried out yet another coup dtat. The ostensible reason for this intervention was the inability of civilian politicians to stop the increasing political polarization and street violence that pitted leftists and Kurdish activists, Islamists and Turkish ultranationalists against each other. All political movements were banned; thousands of activists were arrested, tortured and tried. Islamists were also brought to trial, and the recent revolution in Iran was held up as a Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 1

threatening example of the danger of Islamic ideology. But it was precisely the military regime of the early 1980s that, perceiving the left to be the greater danger, made religious education in public schools obligatory and embarked on a campaign of building mosques in villages that did not yet have one. The Diyanet organization further expanded, and was also deliberately used by the regime to extend its control over the Turkish communities in Western Europe, which were considered vulnerable to various ideological influences. The religious functionaries at the consulates and the Diyanet-appointed imams in Turkish mosques constituted the most effective means of overseeing Turkeys European subjects. Turkeys military establishment has been and remains fiercely secular and highly suspicious of personal piety. The armed forces are wary of infiltration by practising Muslims, and officers who publicly pray (or are discovered to be praying in private) and who refuse to drink alcohol are passed over for promotion or even dismissed from the armed forces. The generals have consistently considered the founder of Turkeys first pro-Islamic political parties, Necmettin Erbakan, as the countrys most dangerous civilian. However, aware that religion remains important to a large part of the population, and wary of the influence of socialist thought among the heterodox Alevi minority, the imposition of a state-oriented, nationalist brand of Sunni Islam appeared to them to be the lesser evil. They adopted the TurkishIslamic synthesis, a set of nationalist ideas, in which Islam appeared as part of the Turkish identity, as the core of the official ideology.

The Imam Hatip schools The secular Republic of Turkey thus has tens of thousands of religious personnel on the payroll of its Directorate of Religious Affairs, primarily prayer leaders and preachers to serve in the mosques but also more highly educated personnel for more specialized functions. (And although many secular Turks may not set foot in a mosque in their lifetime, the funerary rites usually include a service in the mosque. Even the most staunchly secular military officers are taken to the mosque before their burial, for a service in which at least some people participate in the prayer for the dead. Even if only on the day of ones burial, therefore, almost everyone needs an imam.) In order to train this personnel, the state has established special schools, Imam Hatip schools, which combine a general school curriculum with a fair amount of religious subjects, including Arabic language training. These schools are not administered by Diyanet but by the Ministry of Education. Over the past half century, the level and number of these schools has gradually increased. Currently, they are of the lyce or upper high school level. An Imam Hatip Lyce diploma makes the graduate eligible to a modest appointment as a mosque official, but it also gives access to higher education in one of the Faculties of Theology ( lahiyat Fakltesi). There used to be only one such faculty, but their number has significantly increased. The imams who are sent to Europe by Diyanet as well as those of Milli Gr are usually graduates of one of the theological faculties; some even have completed postgraduate studies. Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 2

The Imam Hatip schools have expanded so much that they are producing many more graduates than will ever find employment as mosque personnel. And in fact, many if not most of their graduates have no intention whatsoever to just become prayer leaders or preachers. The schools have turned into something different from what their founders intended: schools of preference and a channel of upward social mobility for the children of an important, conservative segment of the population. Many conservative, religious-minded parents in rural and small-town Turkey sent their children after primary school to an Imam Hatip high school, because this is the only school type where they would study Islamic subjects besides the general curriculum and where the teachers were believed to impart traditional moral values much like many parents in Europe would prefer a Christian over a neutral school. Many of those parents would, however, wish their children to pursue modern careers and find more prestigious and better-paid jobs than that of a modest preacher. In electoral politics, Turkeys religious conservatives are influential, and to please this constituency, conservative governments gradually made it possible for Imam Hatip Lyce graduates to continue higher education in other institutions besides the Faculties of Theology. The secularist establishment politicians, bureaucrats, and especially the military has always considered this a serious threat to the Republics secular order. The issue became especially contentious when in the late 1970s Erbakans National Salvation Party (MSP) began to plead for the right of Imam Hatip graduates to be admitted to the military and police academies. The secularists did all they could to prevent religious conservatives from infiltrating those sectors of the state that really mattered security, the judiciary, education, culture but were only partially successful. The 1980s and 1990s were a period of great and rapid social mobility for many people of religious conservative background. Whereas Muslim entrepreneurship had previously been associated with small and technologically backward companies based in Central and East Anatolia, Turkeys neoliberal economic reforms of the 1980s resulted in the emergence of a dynamic new class of Muslim businessmen, dubbed the Anatolian tigers. These were internationally oriented and confident in their ability to transform the country. Unprecedented numbers of pious young people, including numerous Imam Hatip graduates, gained entrance in the universities (through competitive entrance examinations) and performed well. In municipal elections of 1994, the pro-Islamic Welfare (Refah) Party won in both Istanbul and Ankara, giving the religious conservatives the opportunity to show that they were at least as capable administrators as their secularist predecessors and allowing them to appoint numerous party activists as municipal officials and civil servants. As Ismail a lar shows in this report, many of the conservatives who rose to prominence in those years, in business, politics and education, shared a connection with the same Imam Hatip school. Old boys networks linking cohorts of school graduates are a well-known phenomenon in Turkey, but they usually united friends who had studied together at the old elite schools, such as the Galatasaray Lyce, the (Francophone) Lyce Saint Joseph or Ankaras Mlkiye, the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. The Imam Hatip schools had Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 3

established similar networks of alumni and, as these were becoming more affluent, the networks were increasingly able to support promising young graduates and helping them find placement in good universities. One of the ways by which the secular elite has attempted to check the upward social mobility of religious conservatives has been the enforcement of the headscarf ban in universities. The more affluent conservatives could, like prime minister Erdo an, send their daughters to prestigious universities in the US, where the headscarf has never been an issue. For others, the enforcement of the ban presented a serious dilemma. In the wake of the veiled military intervention of 1997 (known in Turkey as the 28 February process), a more systematic measure was taken to stop the rise of Imam Hatip graduates. The regulations for university entrance were so modified that it became practically impossible for them to gain entrance in any other faculty than that of theology. It was this measure that provided the main impetus behind the phenomenon studied in this report, the organized migration of many of the best graduates from Imam Hatip Lyces for higher education in Europe.

The rich landscape of Turkeys unofficial Islam Whereas Diyanet may be said to embody Turkeys official, state-sponsored Islam although the secular elite have always had an ambivalent attitude towards Diyanet, perceiving it to be a potential Trojan horse a significant proportion of the population adheres to socially conservative varieties of Islam and reject the secularism of the Republics founders. These religious conservatives have long remained deprived of political power and cultural influence; they constituted a symbolic diaspora as the sociologist Yasin Aktay calls it, a community in exile, forced or self-imposed, from the centres of culture and politics. Since the authoritarian single-party system was replaced by a multi-party democracy, in the aftermath of the Second World War, parties right of the centre have appealed to their vote and made symbolic gestures to please them without properly representing them with the partial exception of the proIslamic National Salvation Party and its successors. Turkish Islam differs from that of the Arab lands in its high degree of organization, noticeable both in Turkey itself and among Turkish immigrant communities in Europe. Sufi orders were the most important and influential forms of social organization in the Ottoman Empire, in urban as well as rural society, with a following among all social classes. The sheikhs or spiritual leaders of the Sufi orders wielded a great influence over their followers and were therefore potentially important political actors. The Sufi orders (tarikat) varied in their rituals and to some extent also in their belief system; they ranged from the orthodox and sober Naqshbandi order through the more ecstatic Qadiri and Rifai orders to the Shia-influenced Bektashi order, that was especially attractive to higher bureaucrats and intellectuals. After a large Kurdish uprising in 1925, which was led by a Naqshbandi sheikh and appeared to be directed against the first secularizing measures, all Sufi orders were banned. Public activities of the orders were henceforth practically impossible, but many sheikhs retained much of their Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 4

influence, and after 1950 we repeatedly find sheikhs or their relatives acting as vote-getters for one of the parties of the right. From the 1980s onwards, the Sufi orders have become increasingly visible, although formally remaining banned. It was not only the secularist founders of the Republic who objected to the superstitions and the blind obedience to sheikhs that have often been associated with Sufi orders. There was also considerable criticism from within, and various alternatives for traditional Sufi orders emerged. The single most important of them is the faith movement initiated by the Kurdish mullah Said-i Nursi, which became known as the Nur (Light) movement. Nursi was a remarkable man, obsessed with the ideal of finding a synthesis of traditional faith and modern science. Although coming from a background strongly coloured by the worldview and daily devotions of the Naqshbandi order, he rejected the authoritarian pattern of organization and the unthinking obedience that were often typical of the Sufi orders. Instead he advocated modern education, combined with personal spiritual guidance in a mystical understanding of Islam. Nursis writings, collectively known as the Risale-i Nur (Treatise on the [Divine] Light), present a mystical and visionary interpretation of the Quran and have become hugely influential in Turkey. During Nursis lifetime, the Nur movement was a very loose network of people inspired by him, who in small groups read and discussed parts of the Risale-i Nur and often made handwritten copies of those sections. After his death, his closest disciples (known as the abi, elder brothers) continued to lead the movement, which developed into a nation-wide network of reading circles that regularly hold meetings or sohbet, in which a senior member (also known as abi) reads and explains the Risale, and in which also various practical daily matters may be discussed. In due time, the Nur movement split into a number of distinct groups as differences emerged over matters of interpretation and political alliance. Somewhat distinct from the original Nur movement, but also inspired by Nursi, is the Fethullah Glen movement (known to its followers as Hizmet, Serving), which is the most dynamic and rapidly expanding Islamic movement not only in Turkey but possibly worldwide. The Nur and Glen movements differ at least theoretically from traditional Sufi orders in rejecting the principle of initiation, the unconditional obedience to the sheikh, and various superstitioous practices for which some tarikat are known. Membership in these movements is fluid; there is no clear line separating actual members from sympathizers, and authority is less clearly hierarchical: abi are respected because they are knowledgeable, not because of some presumed spiritual superiority. The movements may be called intellectualist because of the importance they attach to reading and understanding a written text (the Risale-i Nur), whereas in traditional Sufi orders the person of the sheikh used to be the dominant factor. Whereas outsiders may lump them together with Sufi orders proper under the name of tarikat, they prefer the term cemaat (congregation, but with connotations similar to denomination) as a neutral description of themselves. In practice, however, the differences are not so great; Nursi and Glen are venerated as much as any Sufi sheikh if not more, and there is a ranking of abi within the movements that is Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 5

reminiscent of the hierarchy of the tarikat sheikhs deputies. On the other hand, many Sufi orders have also shed some of their old characteristics and have become more fluid in organization and membership. Some tarikat have in fact transformed themselves into a different type of organization. This is for instance the case of one particular branch of the Naqshbandi order, led by Sheikh Sleyman Tunahan (which therefore became known as Sleymanc, after the sheikhs name). Tunahan and his disciples became influential in Turkey as well as in the Turkish diaspora in Europe through the Quran courses, and later boarding schools, that they established. Core members of this movement continue to practice some of the devotions that are typical of the Naqshbandi order, but there is a large and fluid community that is more or less in sympathy with the conservative and strict religious views for which the movement became known, without actively participating in core activities. Like the Nur and Glen cemaat, the Sleymanci cemaat has a cohesive core and a large periphery, without clear outer boundaries. Another branch of the Naqshbandi order, which had many businessmen and politicians among its followers, became a major support of Turkeys only significant Islamist movement, Milli Gr , of which Necmettin Erbakan was the political leader. Erbakan established a series of political parties with a pro-Islamic and initially anti-Western platform, of which the National Salvation Party (MSP, 1973-80) and Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, 1983-98) were the most successful. Many of the core members and supporters of the Milli Gr parties were the disciples of one particular Naqshbandi sheikh, whose endorsement of political participation was believed to be crucial to the success of the MSP and its successors. Most of the other tarikat and cemaat, however, did not support these parties but usually allied themselves with the main liberal-right parties of the day, the Justice Party (AP, 1961-80), the Motherland Party (ANAP, 1983-2009), or the Right Path Party (DYP, 1983-2007). It is only the current ruling party, the Party of Justice and Development (AKP, established in 2001) that succeeded in mobilizing support from the entire spectrum of conservative Islam. The tarikat and cemaat mentioned here do not exhaust the entire range of religiously conservative Turkey. There exist various smaller cemaat and conservative writers and preachers with large followings, and many conservatives do not belong to any cemaat at all. Nor are the cemaat strictly separate from one another; individual people may move from one cemaat to another (though this does not happen very frequently), and in a single family one may find people affiliated with different cemaat. A range of newspapers, journals and magazines, and more recently television channels target conservative audiences and have found their own publics, that do not, or only partially, overlap with the constituencies of the cemaat. The Imam Hatip alumni network is not associated with any particular movement or cemaat but rather provides a broader identity that subsumes the various strands of religious conservatives. Religious functionaries, for whom the schools were originally established, constitute a minority among the alumni, and they are definitely not the most conspicuous group among them. As aglar shows, Imam Hatip lyce graduates have shown a strong Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 6

preference for continuing studies in the most prestigious secular faculties such as engineering and medicine, and relatively few list theology as their first choice. (Actual placement of these students, as for students in general, was based on their test scores and did not often correspond to their first preferences.) The emergence of the headscarf issue in Turkey in the 1990s is directly related with the increasing numbers of women university students of conservative family backgrounds. Not all of these were Imam Hatip lyce graduates, but a considerable number were. In state universities it had been, and remained, virtually unthinkable for women to wear a headscarf, but as a result of the economic liberalization and privatization policies of the 1980s, many private universities were established, which were less strict in adhering to Kemalist norms of sartorial modernity. As more and more women donned headscarves in public, students took to wearing it on campus as well, giving rise to public outcry from secularists and ultimately a stricter ban of the headscarf in universities. This in turn was an incentive for conservatives to explore the possibilities for higher education abroad something that became more urgent when new regulations made it virtually impossible for Imam Hatip lyce graduates to gain entrance in Turkish universities.

Turkeys religious conservatives and Europe Traditionally, Turkeys Kemalists have been the advocates of modernizing Turkey by adopting Western European values and dissociating the country from the Middle East, and the conservatives tended to look back nostalgically to the Ottoman past. In his first programmatic writings of the early 1970s, Necmettin Erbakan presented the (then) European Community as a Christian-Zionist project that aimed to colonize Turkey, and he called for a Middle Eastern common market in order to resist European economic expansion. His Milli Gr movement established friendly relations with the international Muslim Brotherhood. During the brief period that Erbakan was prime minister, leading a coalition cabinet of his Refah party and the secular Right Path Party (1996-7), he made an effort to strengthen Turkeys ties with Arab countries one of the reasons why he was forced out by the military. By the 1990s, the anti-European attitude of religious conservatives in general had been replaced by an awareness that European liberal democracies allowed Muslims more freedom to practice their faith than the Kemalist Republic did. Moreover, the radical neoliberal transformation of Turkeys economy had resulted in the emergence of a new class of internationally oriented Muslim businessmen, who were strongly in favour of Turkeys accession to the European Union. It was the AKP, which came out of the Milli Gr tradition but broke with Erbakans anti-European bias, that brought Turkey closer to the EU than any secular party had been able to do. It was supported in its pro-European policies by a broad conservative constituency. The various Islamic movements cemaat had been present among the Turkish labour migrants in Europe since the 1970s, and in the wake of the military coup of 1980 they strengthened Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 7

their organizations in Europe more successfully than the left did. The Sleymanc were the first to establish a network of mosques and Turkish Islamic Centres, where Quran courses were offered, but they were soon outcompeted by more broadly based mosque associations. Diyanet intervened successfully after 1980 to bring most of the Turkish mosques under its control, while Milli Gr carved out its own network of mosques and associations, with a central directorate overseeing the activities all over Europe from Germany. The Sufi orders and the Nur and Glen communities did not establish their own mosques but initially organized their followings through sohbet in private homes. Later the latter established dormitories and student homes as an important service to their constituency, and several Sufi orders established small tekke, gathering places for carrying out their distinct devotions. For all these groups and cemaat, the branches in Europe became an extremely important support and safety net for the mother organizations in Turkey. Leaders from Turkey frequently visited the European branches; at times of repression in Turkey, Europe offered to many a safe haven to weather the storm. There must have been quite a few Imam Hatip graduates among the Turkish Muslims in Western Europe, but they have not before been noticed as a distinct group. Most of the imams serving in Turkish mosques in Europe were (and are) Imam Hatip graduates, but to the extent that they are organized it is the mosque federations employing them rather than the common school background that brings them together. In the course of his research reported in this study, aglar found that there had been attempts, for instance in the Netherlands, to establish an association of Imam Hatip graduates but that the association had not shown any activities during the past years. The Imam Hatip alumni with whom this study deals belong precisely to that segment that has moved away from the modest prospect of life as a simple religious functionary to more ambitious non-religious professional careers, and who came to Europe for the sole purpose of study. They constitute a network that is quite distinct from that of the imams and preachers.

Imam Hatip goes transnational: NDER, WONDER and the European diaspora It was the 28 February process and the measures practically banning Imam Hatip lyce graduates from entrance in Turkish universities apart from the faculties of theology that propelled many of the best of those graduates to academic pursuits in Europe. NDER, the association of alumni and sympathizers of the Imam Hatip schools in Turkey, selected the most promising graduates and offered them grants for study at European universities. More or less accidentally, Vienna became the destination of choice for the majority of them, although smaller numbers settled for universities in other countries. For Turks as well as West Europeans, the name of Vienna reverberates with memories of earlier Turkish-European encounters. Hundreds of Imam Hatip graduates learned German and completed their university education here, in such fields as international law, engineering and medicine. Their association in Vienna, WONDER, provided a warm and welcoming environment for several generations of students and helped them on finding jobs after completing their studies. Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 8

Almost without exception, the students in WONDER aim to return to Turkey and find professional employment there which at least for the headscarf-wearing women among them remains impossible in the public sector. The private sector discriminates less against qualified headscarf-wearing women, and several WONDER women did find good jobs there. Others chose to become lecturers at a private Turkish (but English-language) university in Sarajevo, which more recently has become a second important centre where Imam Hatip graduates go to pursue higher education. This university was established by private entrepreneurs of conservative religious background and is not affiliated with any specific cemaat (unlike another Turkish university in Sarajevo, which belongs to the Glen organization). Thus a self-perpetuating alternative stream of education in exile appears to have emerged. Students of Imam Hatip school background, many of them from small towns in central and eastern Turkey, are receiving good higher education abroad better perhaps than they would have received in Turkey. They constitute a potential alternative elite in exile, preparing for return and for the time being unlikely to seek integration in the countries of residence. The WONDER community, which now counts around eight hundred students and alumni, has a strong group coherence, which on the one hand has somewhat restricted contacts with other students, let alone wider European society, but on the other hand enhances the strength of this alternative network.

Background of this study of the Imam Hatip diaspora The existence of this transnational Imam Hatip network has not been noticed in academic studies before; it was discovered more or less accidentally by Ismail a lar in the course of preparations for another research project. He heard about the presence of a large number of students in Vienna and of smaller numbers in such countries as Bosnia and Romania. No information was available on the extent of this transnational network, and whether there were also significant numbers of Imam Hatip alumni studying in other West European countries. a lar had earlier noticed that many members of the new political and economic elite whose prominence was closely connected with the rise of the AKP belonged to the same age cohort of alumni of one particular Imam Hatip lyce in Istanbul. That cohort had reached maturity in the years when there were no restrictions keeping Imam Hatip graduates from obtaining higher professional education. From 1998 onward, the possibilities of social mobility for Imam Hatip graduates were drastically reduced, at least in Turkey. This made it interesting to take a closer look at those promising graduates, usually the best of their class, who were given grants for study abroad. It was decided that a lar would begin with a study of the student community in Vienna, using participant observation as the major method, and from there would move on to other places, following connections of his respondents. a lar stayed in Vienna in June and again from September to November 2009, interviewing numerous students and alumni and taking part in all activities of WONDER. It was hoped that their networks of friends would yield contacts with Imam Hatip graduates studying in other Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe 9

countries, but that proved elusive. The only significant contacts were with the secondary cluster of Imam Hatip graduates (and their teachers) at the Turkish private university in Sarajevo. A number of individual students could be found in Germany some using their NDER grant at a university where they had applied for admission, others paying their own studies and slightly larger numbers in East European countries, but the only significant clusters found were those in Vienna and Sarajevo. Interviews in those two places were complemented with interviews with officers of NDER in Istanbul. However, it proved impossible to obtain systematic data on the numbers of students who had been given grants, the universities and faculties where they studied, the rate of successful completion of studies, and employment after graduation. This is an exploratory study, that may raise more questions than yield definitive answers.

The Imam Hatip graduates network compared with other transnational networks Ismail a lars research was part of a broader research project on transnational Muslim networks that are relevant to the Muslim communities in Western Europe. Other networks studied concern Salafi networks emanating from North Lebanon and the Turkish Glen movement. One of the things that makes the Imam Hatip network interesting is precisely its difference with the other Turkish Islamic transnational networks. The most impressive of those networks, that of Diyanet-affiliated mosque associations, emerged initially from grassroots initiatives in the European diaspora but was completely taken over, reorganized and expanded by the Turkish state and is controlled through Turkeys embassies, consulates and local dependencies of Diyanet, such as the Netherlands Islamic Foundation.1 The movement of people, goods and ideas in this network is meant to serve and control the Turkish communities in Western Europe and prevent them from coming under undesirable influences. This is the most centralized of the various Turkish-Islamic networks, and many of its active members (the imams and diplomatic attachs for religious affairs) are civil servants, who are recalled to Turkey after a few years of foreign service. This significantly reduces the potential impact on the Diyanet organization and its social circles in Turkey of ideas and practices developing in the European development. The earliest Turkish-Islamic transnational network was that of the Sleymanc movement, who in the 1970s were the first to establish mosques and provide imams. In Turkey, the Sleymanc were oppressed as a banned tarikat and had to operate with great caution; the European environment provided them with unprecedented opportunities to organize and
This network is studied in the recent report by Sunier, Landman et al. , 'Diyanet: the Turkish Directorate for Religious Affairs in a changing environment', VU University Amsterdam / Utrecht University, 2011. Available online at: http://www.fsw.vu.nl/nl/Images/Final%20report%20Diyanet%20February%202011_tcm30200229.pdf
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spread their conservative religious views among the pious segments of the Turkish migrant population. Through their Quran courses they reached out to a much wider constituency than they would have found in Turkey itself. Arguably, the influence they wielded among Turks in Europe strengthened the leadership in Turkey in negotiations with the political establishment. The expansion of the Diyanet network around 1980 was to a large extent intended to curtail the influence of the Sleymanc network, which the state considered as a serious threat.2 For the Milli Gr movement, Western Europe has similarly provided a safe haven at times when it was repressed in Turkey (especially during the first years following the 1980 coup). The most radical wing, led by Cemalettin Kaplan, who soon was to break away from Milli Gr and lead his own Caliphate movement, proclaimed his intention to carry out an Iranianstyle Islamic revolution in Turkey from his German exile. Both Kaplan and the more moderate leaders of Milli Gr in Germany pursued dual goals: on the one hand they organized a following in Europe and represented their interests as Muslim immigrants; on the other hand they made great efforts to harness the strength of their diaspora organizations in the service of political struggles in Turkey. Milli Gr especially proved to be a successful fundraiser for various activities of the mother organization in Turkey. (That there have been complaints of insufficient transparency and accusations of embezzlement is a different matter.) The European Milli Gr communities appear to be in a stronger negotiating position vis-vis the mother organization in Turkey than the mosque associations under the Diyanet banner. One reason no doubt is the division of the movement in Turkey, as Erdo an and other younger generation leaders broke away from Erbakan to establish the Justice and Development Party, leaving the latter in command of a much smaller new party, the Felicity Party (SP); a more recent split resulted in a third party with its roots in the Milli Gr movement, the HAS (Peoples Voice) Party. At least as important a reason consists of developments within the European Milli Gr itself. As second generation leaders, who had grown up in Europe, gradually took over from the founding members of the first generation, the focus on Turkey decreased and discourse and action were steered away from the earlier Islamist preoccupations and towards integration in European society a trend that one close observer has called post-Islamist.3

The Sleymanc network remains rather untransparent, even though it appears to be opening itself up to contacts with other Muslim communities and the European host societies. One of the few perceptive studies is: Gerdien Jonker, Eine Wellenlnge zu Gott: der "Verband der islamischen Kulturzentren" in Europa, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2002. Werner Schiffauer, Nach dem Islamismus. Eine Ethnographie der Islamischen Gemeinschaft Milli Gr , Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010. This work should be read in combination with an earlier study, Gnter Seufert, 'Die Milli-Gr -Bewegung (AMGT/IGMG): zwischen Integration und Isolation', in: Gnter Seufert and Jacques Waardenburg (eds), Turkish Islam and Europe / Trkischer Islam und Europa: Europe and Christianity as reflected in Turkish Muslim discourse & Turkish Muslim life in the diaspora, Istanbul-Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999, pp. 295-322.
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Mutatis mutandis the same may be said of the Glen movement. With a central leadership based in Istanbul (and the charismatic leader himself residing in Pennsylvania), this movement is not only active in Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora but also in numerous countries in Asia and Africa where there are no significant Turkish communities. In Western Europe, however, its activities concern primarily the Turkish immigrant communities, and the local leaders are a mix of elder brothers (abi) sent from Turkey and locally educated young activists. The movement engages in a much wider range of activities than other cemaat, but a central concern in all activities is the formation of a well-educated and disciplined elite of pious men and women, selected from the Turkish community, who may act as its moral and practical leaders. Stronger than other cemaat, the Glen movement is characterized by a missionary spirit, a desire to lift the economic and moral status of the Turkish communities, in the wider societies where they live. The locally trained activists are expected to adhere to a strict code of moral behaviour and to follow given outlines of activities in the service of the movement, but they appear free to adapt the concrete forms of those activities to local conditions. The Glen movement has shown great adaptability to the situation and opportunities of each of the countries where it is active. Ideas and practices developed in the diaspora are unlikely to have much of an impact on the movements functioning in Turkey.4 In all these transnational networks, the movement of people with religious or political authority from Turkey to the Turkish immigrant communities in Western Europe is a conspicuous element, and organizing and educating those communities is an important aim of their activities. Leaders also emerge from within the local cemaat, and it is usual for them to travel to Turkey regularly for consultation with their Turkey-based elders. There is two-way communication, but the mother organizations in Turkey are clearly invested with the higher authority. Theoretically it is possible for developments in the European branches to have an impact in Turkey, but such transnational influences in the reverse direction are not really in evidence. The Imam Hatip network differs in a number of respects from these others. In the first place, its members did not move to Europe for organizing and training the migrant worker communities that were already in place there, nor to provide a Turkey-based organization with a foreign foothold and safe haven. Their aim was simply to get the good higher education that had been made inaccessible for them in Turkey. Although student members of WONDER did establish contact with Turkish workers in Vienna, such contacts have remained incidental and relatively insignificant. The entire network consists of young people in the same age range, most of whom were among the best graduates of Imam Hatip lyces in Anatolia. They are a potential counter elite, preparing themselves for leading roles in Turkey when they can return. In this respect, they are reminiscent of that other exile group of a century ago, the
Martin van Bruinessen, De Fethullah Glenbeweging in Nederland, report presented to the Netherlands government, September 2010. Available online at: http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ministeries/bzk/documenten-enpublicaties/kamerstukken/2010/12/14/kabinetsreactie-inzake-onderzoek-fethullah-gulenbeweging-rapport-defethullah-gulenbeweging-in-nederland.html.
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Young Turks. It is ironical that the religious conservatives, having been prevented from attending Turkish universities by their secularist opponents, have been obliged to become more internationally oriented than their foes.

Bruinessen, Imam Hatip graduates studying in Europe

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