Addressing Global Needs and Respecting Local Environments

Gulen Movement has demonstrated a prominent activity by establishing a worldwide network of businesses, schools, foundations, institutions and media outlets. Despite of the cultural, economical, political and social differences among  countries, activity of Gulen Movement has been equally successful everywhere and in various spheres. The fair question is “What constitutes global popularity of Gulen Movement despite all political, cultural, linguistic, economic and social barriers?” Many factors can be brought to attention to explain the reason of such success. However, I would like to tease out the most important ones looking from theoretical point of view. One of the key factors that can be brought to attention to explain the reason of this success is the fact that Gulen Movement has always tried to adapt to the local environments by showing humane respect and appreciation to local culture. Gulen Movement doesn’t offer a sort of cookie-cutter approach claiming that Movement has its own recipe capable to solve all social problems in every country. On the contrary, it respectively perceives every country as a unique case and encourages people to use their local dynamics to overcome their difficulties and social problems. Moreover, Gulen Movement encourages people to value and develop their cultural inheritances, traditions and arts. Another factor of success is that Gulen Movement aims to eradicate ignorance, intolerance, prejudice, inequality, poverty and violence; it also promotes peace, human rights, dialogue, justice and love. In other words, it promotes things that are absolutely needed by any society and things that exist in separate dimension beyond abovementioned society-created obstacles. It is crucial to know that Gulen Movement is more known in Turkey as ‘Hizmet’, which translates as ‘service’ from Turkish. Even from its name it is clear that Movement intends not to conduct or supervise a process of solving problems in a society, but to get involved into local environments to understand people’s needs, share their struggle and provide ‘service’ to humanity.