Der Spiegel has published a piece about
the Hizmet (Gülen) movement. Unfortunately, the piece does not look like
a work of journalism.
The wording, selection of so-called experts, and most importantly
distortions, misleading points and false information make the piece very
problematic.
The piece starts with a claim that “Gülen likes to present himself as
the Gandhi of Islam”. However, Gülen has never made such a comparison.
Without giving any background information about the Turkish politics and
law, the piece accuses the movement being secretive. Its readers have a
right to know that still in 2012, it is a crime to establish Islamic
groups, movements and brotherhoods. These of course exist but they can
only exist unofficially and depending on the socio-political situation,
the authorities will turn a blind eye to these groupings that would
operate normally in any proper democracy. Whenever conditions change,
the authorities heavily punish these groups. Thus, as the piece puts the
movement does not have an address or bank account but this is not its
fault. This does not mean that the movement is secretive. It consists of
volunteers, schools, businesses and so on. They operate as loose
informal networks that the authorities know about and all these
institutions are transparent institutions that regularly inspected by
the relevant authorities.
