In 2022, the HRC’s Works that Shaped the World public lecture series focuses on religion.

The Gülen Movement is one of the world’s largest transnational Islamic organisations. It emerged in the 1960s in Izmir, Turkey, through the efforts of the now retired Imam Fethullah Gülen. Inspired by the theology of Said Nursi, Gülen sought to develop a holistic education program that brought together both the physical sciences and Islam. This began in the form of summer camps and would eventually lead to the development of the Movement’s first school in 1982. Subsequently, they would become one of Turkey’s premier education providers with around 300 schools and study centres by the 1990s. This success then saw the Movement branch out to the newly formed Post-Soviet Central Asian Republics; a transnational experiment that would see the Movement cultivate schools in 160 countries around the world at its peak.

The central aim of the schools is to create a “golden generation” of pious, yet well-educated, Muslims that can act as moral change agents in the world. However, a rift between the Movement and the Turkish government began to form in 2013 following accusations of it instigating a corruption probe into the government and culminated in exile in 2016 after the Movement was implicated in the July 15 coup attempt.

This public lecture will chart the rise and fall of the Gülen Movement, unpacking its core tenets practices and ongoing significance.

Presenter:

Dr David Tittensor (Western Sydney University & Deakin University)

Dr David Tittensor is a lecturer and researcher at Western Sydney University in the School of Social Sciences and an Honorary Fellow at Deakin University in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. His research interests are Muslim movements, Turkish politics, religion and society, and religion and development with a focus on Islam. He is the author of The House of Service: The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way (Oxford University Press, 2014) and his latest co-authored monograph is Religion and Change in Australia(Routledge, 2022).