Both were religious men. In the early 1970s, Cemal Usak and Recep Tayyip Erdogan were classmates at the Istanbul Imam Hatip Lisesi, an Islamic high school. By the end of the decade, their career paths had begun, ever so slightly, to diverge. “I was coming from what you would call a tradition of cultural Islam,” says Usak. “He opted for political Islam”. Still, he says, the pair remained close. Today, forty years removed from his high school days, Usak is a leading figure in Turkey’s largest Islamic movement, the Gulen community. Erdogan, meanwhile, is the country’s Prime Minister and by far the most powerful man in the land, if not the entire region. Usak still counts the Turkish leader as a personal friend, but the alliance between the groups that each man represents – and which helped bring Erdogan to power – is fast unraveling. For the first time in years, the glue that binds Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is being put to the test. To Turks and outside observers alike, Usak’s movement remains something of a puzzle. Its leader, Fethullah Gulen, a septuagenarian preacher, resides in a sprawling estate in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. Its followers, said to number in the millions in Turkey alone, preach a feel-good gospel of tolerance, almsgiving and education, which they feel is intrinsic to Islam. Their preferred activities, at least those advertised publicly, include running hundreds of schools across the world, organizing humanitarian assistance, and engaging other religious groups in inter-faith dialogue. (MORE: ‘Turkish Betrayal’ Is the Talk of Israel) The movement’s leading lights insist that it has no political agenda to speak of. Critics find this laughable. Over the years, they say, the Gulenists have accumulated and exercised considerable power in Turkey, rising to positions of influence inside the civil service, the media and the business community. The movement, some of them say, has become a state within a state. Formerly one of Erdogan’s most stalwart allies, the Gulen community has recently become a major thorn in the Prime Minister’s side. Last![]()
