Date posted: August 30, 2014
Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish scholar, thinker, social entrepreneur and opinion leader known as founder of Gulen Movement. He stances for democracy, interfaith dialogue, peaceful coexistence, and secular education where universal values are embodied by altruistic teachers.
Tags: Fethullah Gulen | Peacebuilding |

Professor Ori Z. Soltes, author of ‘Embracing the World: Fethullah Gülen’s Thought and Its Relationship to Jalaluddin Rumi and Others,’ explains how Gülen’s perception of Sufism is grounded particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jalaluddin Rumi, Ibn Arabi and Said Nursi, but is also grounded in the idea of selflessness.

Ruşen Çakır If there is a Turkish factor in Iraq Kurdistan (North Iraq), Gulen movement volunteers made an enormous contribution to this for almost 20 years. In spite of terrible conditions, they founded the first [Gulen-inspired] school in 1994 in Arbil. Today they run 18 schools in Iraq Kurdistan, one of which is Ishik University that was founded in 2008. […]

I condemn, in the strongest terms, the barbaric terrorist attack on attendees of a wedding ceremony in Gaziantep, Turkey that took the lives of more than fifty citizens, including children, and wounded many others. This is not just an attack on the attendees of a wedding, but also an attack on the solidarity of people of Anatolia, including Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Boshniaks, Albanians, Georgians and Circassians and others who lived as neighbors for centuries.

Vicente Fox served his term as President from 2000 to 2006. He was the first candidate from an opposition party to be elected president since 1920. Under his leadership, the country experienced a stretch of fundamental economic strength and stability. The perspectives of the Institute are inspired by the life and works of the distinguished contemporary scholar and civic leader Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Muslim scholar, thinker, author, poet, opinion leader, educational activist, and preacher emeritus. He is regarded as the initiator and inspirer of the worldwide social movement of human values known as the Hizmet (Service) Movement or the Gülen Movement.

Turkish media claimed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the AK Party, said, “He [Şükür] resigned on an order [from the Hizmet movement], this is not a decision he can make alone.” However, AK Party spokesman Hüseyin Çelik denied the prime minister had made those comments. “I have spoken to the prime minister, everybody should know that he has not made such a statement,” Çelik said.

The symposium titled “Religious Communities in the World War I,” organized as part of the “1914-Peace-2014” series, jointly by Vienna-based Friede-Institut für Dialog (Peace Institute for Dialogue), the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) and Austrian Katholische Militaerseelsorge took place at the Vienna Military Academy.
