Analysis Of The Influence Of Gulen Movement On Turkish Diplomacy

With the revival of religion around the world,the importance of religion in international relations has gradually become prominent.Guided by the ideology of "Turkish Islam",the Gulen movement has gradually expanded from the religious field to the political,economic,cultural and other fields,becoming a transnational Islamic movement with global influence and forming a powerful material and spiritual force that has impacted the Turkish society.By combing the evolution process,main activities and basic ideology of the Gulen movement,this paper tries to objectively analyze the positive and negative influences of the Gulen movement as a transnational Islamic movement on Turkish diplomacy,and on this basis explores the basic mechanism and essence of the influence of the Gulen movement on Turkish diplomacy.The political,practical and practical nature of the Gulen movement has become the logical starting point for this paper to analyze the influence of the Gulen movement on Turkish diplomacy.By expatiating the development course and stages of the Gulen movement,as well as its basic ideology and main activities,this paper holds that the development of the Gulen movement is closely related to the changes of the domestic political environment in Turkey.The movement seeks not only to influence and dominate Turkey’s domestic political agenda,but also to influence Turkish diplomacy.Before the attempted coup,the Gulen movement assisted Turkey to expand its national soft power by virtue of its special religious brand and huge transnational network,and exerted a positive influence on Turkey’s diplomacy.After the coup attempt,Mr Gulen’s movement is a liability to Turkish diplomacy.With the large-scale liquidation of Gulen himself and his followers by the Erdogan government,the Gulen movement weakens the soft power of Turkey and becomes a point of friction in the bilateral relations between Turkey and its Western Allies,especially the United States,and continues to consume Turkey’s diplomatic resources.Based on the above phenomenon analysis,this paper explores why the Gulen movement can exert influence on Turkish diplomacy and its essence.The close political alliance between the Gulen movement and the AK government enables it to exert great influence on Turkish diplomacy.The huge transnational network of the Gulen movement becomes an important fulcrum of its influence on Turkish diplomacy.Throughout the internal logic of the influence of the Gulen movement on Turkish diplomacy,it can be found that the lasting influence of the Gulen movement on Turkish diplomacy is mainly the result of the political alliance between the Gulen movement and the Erdogan government and the mutual borrowing at the level of domestic and diplomatic affairs.After the two sides became enemies,the Gulen movement still exerted an influence on Turkish diplomacy for a period of time,which was also because of the deep binding between the two sides in the early stage and the Gulen movement took advantage of the situation to become bigger.The Erdogan government takes advantage of the Gulen movement to serve the expansion and consolidation of political power domestically,export Turkish ideology internationally,and promote the realization of its own geopolitical goals and economic interests.But at the same time,the Gulen movement has expanded rapidly and gained relative autonomy with government support,eventually coming back to bite the Erdogan government in a period of political reckoning.