How Gülen’s feud with Erdoğan shaped today’s Turkey

Known to his followers as Hoca efendi (master preacher), Gülen went on to build a solid base of supporters, forming his sect and core cadre, named the Hizmet Hareketi (Movement of Service). By the 1990s, members trained in the lighthouses had started finding positions in state institutions. 

Though under the vigilant eye of the Turkish military, Gülen tried to keep close relations with politicians and the business world alike. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he established schools in Turkic countries, the Balkans and Africa. While his private schools produced thousands of graduates every year, the movement was also able to gain control of companies in various sectors, including food, health, education and media, thanks to his followers’ annual contributions.

Toward the end of the decade, however, Turkish law enforcement prepared a report exposing the movement’s influence within the state apparatus, leading to an investigation by a prosecutor who accused Gülen “of trying to create a theocratic state.”

So, on March 21, 1999, Gülen left Turkey for the U.S. — never to return again.

Not long after, Erdoğan’s rise to power in 2003 presented Gülen’s movement with an opportunity to bring its political influence out of the shadows. The new prime minister lacked influence in the state apparatus, and Gülen needed Erdoğan to help spread the movement’s hold — or, as Gülen himself was quoted as saying in one of his sermons from that time, to “ooze into the state’s arteries.”

But by the 2010s, once secular sections of the Turkish military and judiciary had been purged after show trials like Ergenekon and Sledgehammer — a parallel case targeting the military — the strains between the Gülen and Erdoğan camps approached breaking point.