Turkey. The (Gülen) Cemaat and the State: An Unfinished Conquest

If revolutions are large-scale sudden changes in the composition of political elites as a result of spontaneous or organized mass mobilization, then modern Turkey has undergone none. Başkan points out that Turkey has somehow escaped a fate that befell such countries in its neighborhood as Ukraine, Iran, or Egypt. Turkey has managed to contain all radicalisms, whether of the Leftist or the religious kind and even transformed some, if not all, agents of radicalisms into the servants of the dominant political and economic system. The author shows that Turkey has nurtured, however, a number of groups or movements that have pursued a revolutionary agenda. One of them, a religious kind, has pursued an unusual strategy. Generally referred to as the Gülen movement, this religious group, or simply the Cemaat, has pursued an agenda that is revolutionary because it has aimed at an almost total transformation of the state and the society. The group’s strategy is unusual, however, in that it necessitated extreme temporal patience, or years of hard work.