Well there are also two people that feature alot in the news.
The First is Fetullah Gulen - most have never heard of him
"A life dedicated to peace and humanity"
Gülen was born in Erzurum, Turkey in 1941. He started primary education at his home village, but did not continue after his family moved, and instead focused on informal Islamic education.
Gülen retired from formal preaching duties in 1981. From 1988 to 1991 he gave a series of sermons in popular mosques of major cities. His long career had made him a well-known figure in Islamic circles, however, it was the interfaith dialog efforts, Islamic political activism and his courtship with the center-right political parties in the 1990s that made him a public figure.
Fethullah Gulen himself also worked to moderate his extremist Islamist image, advocating for inter-religious dialogue and holding various meetings with Pope John Paul II, Turkey's Chief Rabbi, and the Armenian Patriarch.
He also wants to see Jerusalem as separate entity - as a place of pilgrimage for the 3 religions and a place that no one needs a visa to enter. (stated in letter to Pope John Paul II 199
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Gülen argues that dialogue between Christians and Muslims is indispensable in view of the now prevailing materialist worldview. He points to a Muslim hadith that says that Jesus will return during the last days, which means that the central values of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as prophetic traditions will in the end prevail.
Voted The World's No 1 thinker
And adding to the fascination is that a major figure in this momentous court battle in Turkey has just been judged by a survey the planet's No. 1 thinker. He's Fetullah Gulen, spiritual leader of the stealth religious movement that increasingly threatens the planet's most modernized and secular Muslim society.
Gulen's followers stuffed the ballot boxes (see this morning's Guardian story) to make him No. 1, but if he's no Kant, there's no denying that he can: Gulen is for sure one of the most powerful Muslim theorists in the world.
An Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers, Gülen is both revered and reviled in his native Turkey. To members of the Gülen movement, he is an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles. To his detractors, he represents a threat to Turkey’s secular order. He has kept a relatively low profile since settling in the United States in 1999, having fled Turkey after being accused of undermining secularism.
PakTurk´s founder, Gulen, has millions of supporters in the Muslim world, its majority found within Turkish borders. ]He believes among other things that like the presence of God´s vicar on Earth in the pope seated in the Vatican, that Muslims should also have a symbolic head within its earthly domain, that of a caliphate,[/size] first erected by the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties during the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
and here is his site. he lives in US just now.
To some, Gülen is a revered Turkish mystic and scholar interested only in education and preaching tolerance; to others he is a reclusive figure who secretly wants to reinstitute the Caliphate and establish an Islamic state in Turkey: an Islamic state that will extend from the Balkans, via Turkey, to all the Central Asiatic republics that were formerly part of the USSR, and on to China. Wendy Kristianasen, editorial director of Le Monde Diplomatique’s English edition asks, “Will Gülen then be the new Sultan?”
An investigative series by Turkish columnist Hikmet Cetinkaya reveals that Gülen was convicted in the 1970s for Islamist activities in Turkey, and spent seven months in prison. During this decade Gülen organised his followers in vakif (private foundations) and conducted clandestine summer camps in the mountains of western Turkey where children as young as primary school age were “taught Islam, and taught to hate unbelievers and to become jihad fighters”. The camps were protected by armed “brothers” and some were run in co-operation with the Suleymancilar Sufi sect, one of whose leaders was a founder of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) of the present Prime Minister, Erdogan:
“Gülen has faced criminal charges several times of seeking to overthrow Turkey’s established political order. The latest charges against him, made in 1999, were nullified after recent legal reforms there, according to Turkey scholars who say Gülen lives in the United States—in Pennsylvania and New Jersey—so he can be treated for a heart condition.”
The above is one version of what occurred in 1999. According to other Turkish analysts, during the Cold War the USA benefited from the Islamist activities of Fethullah Gülen’s organisation against the then Soviet Union, among the Muslims of the Crimea and other Muslims in adjacent regions of the Soviet Union. Following pressure from the Turkish authorities who wanted to arrest him on charges of subverting the secular state, the USA aided Gülen’s escape from Turkey before to his trial, and permitted him to settle in Pennsylvania. Some anti-Islamist circles in Turkey also believe that Gülen helped Erdogan get invited to the White House despite his Islamist background, and before he was even an MP.
Despite the fact that Gülen had gone to the USA before 1999, in 2000 Bulent Aras and Omer Caha would have us believe, in yet another version, that at the time of writing, he was “now retired and living in both Izmir and Istanbul in modest homes given to him by followers while continuing to write extensively”. The lie was given (perhaps inadvertently) to this by Fethullah Gülen’s own website. On November 15, 2005, it described Fethullah Gülen as having “been living in the US for six years because of his health problems”.
Other sources claim that Gülen is one of the richest Turks in the world, living on a large estate in Pennsylvania and running from there his million-member organisation. The perception in political circles in Turkey is that Fethullah Gülen, far from being retired, is the power behind many Islamist politicians, especially the AKP.
The occasion of Fethullah Gülen’s being sought by Turkish authorities in 1999 was the airing on Turkish television of footage of sermons he preached to his supporters in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey under Shari‘a law:
“You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here.”
In Tehran then as in Ankara now, U.S. ambassadors preferred garden parties with the political elite and maintained contacts with only a narrow segment of the population. They were blind. As the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency remained clueless or belittled concerns about Khomeini's intentions, millions of Iranians turned out to greet their Imam at Tehran's international airport. Turks now say that similar crowds might greet Gülen when his plane touches down in Istanbul.
Gülen is careful. He will not order the dissolution of the Turkish Republic. But, ensconced in his Istanbul mansion, he could simply begin to issue fatwas prying Turkey farther from the secularism to which Erdoğan pays lip service. As Khomeini consciously drew parallels between himself and Twelver Shiism's Hidden Imam, Gülen will remain quiet as his supporters paint his return as evidence that the caliphate formally dissolved by Atatürk in 1924 has been restored.
Fethullah Gülen, Islamist, Acquitted
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This means that he can travel to Turkey whenever he wants to. He’s delicious to go where he wants to go, he’s delicious to meet with people he wants to meet.
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Most Turks know who he is, and what he stands for. Most secular Turks both despise and fear him. He has influenced a lot of people, including politicians. His agenda is clear; he wants to bring Islam back into politics. He wants to Islamize the government. He uses science for ‘religious purposes.’ He’s at the center of a gigantic organization, whose goal it is to transform Muslim societies, to begin wth Turkey. He once said that atheists and terrorists are equally despicable. He reportedly told supporters who work for the government, that they should persevere in order to establish an Islamic state.
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He wants to transform Islam into a Turkish Islam; one that focuses strongly on the Ottoman past. He wants to Islamize Turkey’s nationalism. Furthermore, Gülen wants to restore the bond between Islam and government in Turkey; like how it was in the early years of the Ottoman Empire. When it comes to the Turkish identity, Gülen argues that “Turkish” really means “Islamic.”
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It’s clear that if Gülen and his people take over Turkey, the secular system will come to an end. The secular system will be replaced by… the system of the Ottomans.
Here is some more info - Gülen's ideas address the entire world
Gülen has not stayed at the level of creating ideas, but has created a practical platform on which these ideas can be carried out. This quality of his makes him one of the leading intellectuals of the world as well as one the greatest men of action.
He has not rested content with writing about his approaches. These can be roughly summarised as living together in peace; appreciating differences; accepting everybody as they are and bringing about inter-religious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance, which he developed to counter the theses of inter-religious and intercultural clashes. For the realisation of his ideals, he has initiated a civil voluntary movement. Today Fethullah Gülen is able to easily mobilise his followers, estimated at millions, who are craving to accomplish his ideal of transforming the world into an oasis of peace.
[b]And he is famed for the very intimate ties he had established with the late Pope John Paul II and with Patriarch Bartholmew of Constantinople, the Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II Mutafyan and many other representatives from other religions.
There is conflicting info on the net as to whether the US has refused his green card this week( pasting in research I did on 28th June 0
. If he has to leave the USA - will he go back to Turkey? Islamic Turks see him as the next Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire. Recep Erogan's polictical career is in problems just now. Gonna be interesting to see what happens here.
and this article from 13th June 2008
Turkey is being transformed gradually to accept – and even celebrate – an eventual “grandiose return” to the motherland of the new caliph, Fethullah Gülen…