Islam and politics in Turkey: Alliance and rupture between the Fethullah Gülen movement and Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party

Both coming from the conservative Anatolia region, Fethullah Gülen and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have respectively set up a movement and a political party that continue to make their mark on Turkey. Based on the same vision of Islam and on a strategy of neutralizing their opponent, the Kemalist establishment, an alliance was founded between the two in 2002 when the AKP came to power. However, this alliance, which had been ambiguous from the start, did not survive the gradual emergence of numerous political and social differences between the two leaders. Less than ten years after it was founded, the alliance between the two started to crack, before shattering completely in 2013. Since then, the Gülen movement has been banned in Turkey and its representatives exiled abroad, particularly in Western countries. Under Gülen’s leadership, still based in the United States, they are trying to reorganize themselves into a new political structure.