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The Transformation of Islamic Movement in Turkey: Case of Nak ibendî and Nurculuk 

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are established by Islamist groups.

11

 Thus, “religious leaders of these 

brotherhoods, movements, and sects became heads, and the leadership cadres of 

those economic ventures became laymen.”

12

 It is useful to recall that religious 

brotherhoods, in the beginning, supported religious parties – among them the 

Welfare Party – but after they figured out that religious parties’ confrontational 

strategy prompted military intervention, that support become especially 

disadvantageous (unprofitable) for them. Consequently, they gradually changed 

their minds and gave up their support, claiming that religious parties threatened 

the future of democracy in Turkey,

13

 by which they would benefit in the future. 

“… several religious orders withdrew their support from the RP (Welfare Party) 

starting in the early 1990s, and even sent word to the National Security Council 

that they had terminated their link with that party.”

14

 We know that “During recent 

decades, two Nak ibendî shaykhs, Kotku and his successor, the present Shaykh 

Mahmud Esad Cosan, a professor of theology and the late Kotku’s son-in-law, 

have disapproved of the fundamentalist interpretations of Islam by some radical 

brotherhoods.”

15

 Nak ibendîs have adopted an evolutionary rather than a 

revolutionary line on the Islamization of everyday life in Turkey.

16

Nurculuk

17

The Nurculuk represents the modern Turkish religious movement that is 

named after its founder and leader, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1876-1960).

18

 He 

received his education in the Nak ibendî circle, in Bitlis.

19

 “… [Nursi’s] outlook 

was also shaped by the presence of an Ottoman administration modeling itself 

11

 Sencer Ayata, “Patronage, Party, and the State: the Politization of Islam in Turkey,” 

The Middle East Journal, Winter 1996, Volume 50, Number 1, p. 45. In Metin Heper, 

“Islam and Democracy in Turkey: Toward a Reconciliation?” The Middle East 

Journal, Volume 51, Number 1, Winter 1997, p. 38. 

12

 Metin Heper, “Islam and Democracy in Turkey: Toward a Reconciliation?” The

Middle East Journal, Volume 51, Number 1, Winter 1997, p. 38. 

13

  Ibid. 

14

  Ibid., p. 39. 

15

  Ibid. 

16

  Ru en Çakır, “Ayet ve Slogan,” Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1990), p. 23. 

17

 Here I analyze the original Nurcu Movement of Said Nursi and the “neo-Nurcu” 

movement of Fethullah Gülen. 

18

erif Mardin, “Nurculuk,” in Ed. In Chief, John L. Esposito, “The Oxford Encyclo-

pedia of the Modern Islamic World,” New York Oxford, Oxford University Press, 

Volume 3, p. 255. 

19

  Ibid. 

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David Abesadze 

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increasingly on Western Europe.“

20

 After realising that the Turkish modernisation 

movement endangered his backward region, Said Nursi decided to take part in 

defence of his region. Initially he supported the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, 

but after he saw their ambivalence toward Islam he changed his position. Then he 

supported the Kemalist national resistance movement, but when his ideas on Islam 

came into conflict with the secularist Atat rk’s intentions, he was forced into 

exile. During his life, he was exiled and imprisoned several times by the state, on 

the grounds that he had established his own religious order which was forbidden 

by law.

21

 The Nurculuk represented a religious movement of rural areas and 

provincial towns, gradually spreading to larger cities. Among its members were 

highly educated people, including university professors. The major activity of the 

movement was publishing the works of Said Nursi, and brochures on the 

foundation of modern science. They were also publishing the newspaper Yeni 

Asya (New Asia).

22

 Nursi’s readers throughout the country, mostly in 

industrialised cities, formed public reading circles (dershanes), where people, 

primarily students of several universities usually gathered to read the writings of 

Nursi. Today in Turkey, the total number of dershanes is more than 5000.

23

 The 

Said Nursi movement is regarded as the most powerful text-based faith movement 

in Turkey.

24

 It is difficult to find any documents that prove the Nurcu movement’s 

active participation in uprisings like the Nak ibendî. 

The main difference it has with other Islamic movements, as prominent 

Turkish scholar Hakan Yavuz asserts, lies in its understanding of Islam, and its 

strategy for the transformation of society. “Nursi offers a conceptual framework 

for a people undergoing the transformation from a confessional community 

(gemeinschaft) to a secular national society (gesellschaft).

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 Nursi’s work 

responded to the debates of his time. He tried to show that science and 

rationalism were completely compatible with religious belief by trying to 

contemporise Islam by Islamising science. He argued that Islam and democracy 

(which he said is a necessary condition for a just society) were compatible to 

20

  Ibid. 

21

  Ibid. 

22

  Ibid., p. 256. 

23

 M. Hakan Yavuz, “Search for a New Social Contract in Turkey: Fethullah G len, the 

Virtue Party and the Kurds,” SAIS Review, A Journal of International Affairs, Winter-

Spring 1999, Volume XIX, Number one, p. 120. 

24

 M. Hakan Yavuz, “Towards an Islamic Liberalism?: The Nurcu Movement and Fethu-

llah G len,” Middle East Journal, Volume 53, Number 4, Autumn 1999, p. 586.  

25

 Ibid.

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