Fethullah Gülen
April 27, 1941 — October 20, 2024
Fethullah Gülen was a Turkish Islamic scholar, preacher, and social activist who founded the Hizmet ("service") movement — one of the world's largest transnational Islamic civil society networks, operating schools, hospitals, media outlets, and interfaith dialogue organizations in more than 160 countries. He spent the last 25 years of his life in voluntary exile in Pennsylvania, where the Turkish government sought his extradition on charges he consistently denied.
Erzurum and Early Religious Formation
Born on April 27, 1941 in Korucuk, a village near Erzurum in eastern Turkey, Gülen grew up in a devout household. He studied Islamic sciences and became a licensed imam and preacher at a young age, appointed by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs. As a young preacher in Izmir in the 1960s and 1970s he attracted a devoted following through his accessible message combining orthodox Sunni Islamic practice with an emphasis on science, education, tolerance, and interfaith dialogue. His sermons circulated on cassette tapes through the late Cold War period and reached audiences far beyond his immediate congregation. He was deeply influenced by the writings of the Turkish Islamic thinker Said Nursi, whose Nur movement had argued that science and faith were compatible — a position Gülen developed into a comprehensive educational philosophy.
The Hizmet Movement and Global Education Network
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the movement Gülen inspired — called Hizmet, meaning "service" in Turkish — expanded rapidly from Turkey into the former Soviet states and beyond. Its primary vehicle was education: Hizmet-affiliated organizations established hundreds, eventually thousands, of secular-accredited schools in Central Asia, the Balkans, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere, emphasizing mathematics, science, and English alongside Turkish language and moderate Islamic values. In Turkey, Hizmet built a parallel civil infrastructure of business associations, media outlets, schools, and universities. Gülen himself moved to the United States in 1999, ostensibly for medical treatment; the Turkish government sought to charge him with attempting to overthrow the secular state. He settled in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, where he would live for the rest of his life, receiving visitors, writing, and leading his movement at a distance.
Did You Know?
For years, Fethullah Gülen and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were considered close allies; Hizmet-affiliated supporters were widely credited with helping Erdoğan's AKP party win elections in the early 2000s and with using Hizmet-aligned judges and prosecutors to pursue cases against the secularist military. The alliance collapsed spectacularly around 2012-2013, culminating in the Turkish government blaming Gülen for orchestrating the failed July 2016 military coup attempt. Gülen denied any involvement, and Western governments were skeptical of the Turkish account. Turkey designated the Hizmet movement a terrorist organization (FETÖ), froze assets, imprisoned tens of thousands of alleged members, and sought Gülen's extradition. The United States repeatedly declined to extradite him, saying Turkey had not met the legal evidentiary standard. The dispute became one of the most significant fractures in U.S.-Turkey relations during the 2010s.
Final Years and Legacy
Gülen remained in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania until his death on October 20, 2024, at the age of 83. His final years were marked by declining health and the profound disruption of the Hizmet network following the 2016 Turkish crackdown, which closed thousands of schools and businesses, imprisoned supporters, and drove hundreds of thousands of Hizmet-affiliated Turks into exile. His legacy is sharply contested: to his supporters he was a visionary who built a global network dedicated to tolerance, education, and interfaith harmony; to his critics in Turkey and beyond he was the architect of a parallel religious state masquerading as civil society. The Hizmet movement continues to operate internationally, though under severe pressure in Turkey. Whether the historical verdict on Gülen will emphasize his extraordinary constructive achievement in global education or the movement's extensive political activity in Turkey — or both — remains an open question.