Comparing the Social Islam of the Fethullah Gulen Movement with the Political Islam of Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The Gulen movement is one of the most prominent socio-cultural movements in the contemporary Middle East and Islamic world. The foundation of this movement, which has traces of the moderate and tolerant tradition of Anatolian Islamism, is based on the re-reading, production and reproduction of the foundations of Islamic identity. This movement has similarities with Erdogan's Political Islam in some concepts such as neo-Ottomanism, Turkish nationalism, development and knowledge. By choosing another concept of Islam (i.e. political Islam), Erdogan has shown his opposition to Gulen’s thought and approach. The main purpose of this article, in the first place, is to help to better recognize Fethullah Gulen as one of the leading figures of the Islamic world and Erdogan as a figure in a successful Islamic movement in the region and a successful model of combining Islam and modernity in the political arena of Turkish society. Therefore, it seems that understanding their intellectual and ideological roots, especially the Gulen current of thought, is also useful for other Islamic societies that are developing and completing their social and political processes. The hypothesis of the article is that Gulen and Erdogan have similarities and differences in some fundamental concepts. Gulen, influenced by Said Nursi, and Erdogan, influenced by Necmettin Erbakan, have two different interpretations of the teachings of Islam in governing Islamic society. The research method is descriptive-analytical and this article tries to study and analyze Fethullah Gulen’s and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ideas in the field of social Islam and political Islam.