Recognized to his followers as Hoca efendi (grasp preacher), Gülen went on to construct a strong base of supporters, forming his sect and core cadre, named the Hizmet Hareketi (Motion of Service). By the Nineteen Nineties, members skilled within the lighthouses had began discovering positions in state establishments.
Although below the vigilant eye of the Turkish navy, Gülen tried to maintain shut relations with politicians and the enterprise world alike. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he established colleges in Turkic international locations, the Balkans and Africa. Whereas his personal colleges produced hundreds of graduates yearly, the motion was additionally capable of acquire management of corporations in numerous sectors, together with meals, well being, schooling and media, because of his followers’ annual contributions.
Towards the top of the last decade, nevertheless, Turkish regulation enforcement ready a report exposing the motion’s affect inside the state equipment, resulting in an investigation by a prosecutor who accused Gülen “of attempting to create a theocratic state.”
So, on March 21, 1999, Gülen left Turkey for the U.S. — by no means to return once more.
Not lengthy after, Erdoğan’s rise to energy in 2003 introduced Gülen’s motion with a chance to carry its political affect out of the shadows. The brand new prime minister lacked affect within the state equipment, and Gülen wanted Erdoğan to assist unfold the motion’s maintain — or, as Gülen himself was quoted as saying in considered one of his sermons from that point, to “ooze into the state’s arteries.”
However by the 2010s, as soon as secular sections of the Turkish navy and judiciary had been purged after present trials like Ergenekon and Sledgehammer — a parallel case concentrating on the navy — the strains between the Gülen and Erdoğan camps approached breaking level.