The publication of this book could not be more timely. In Fethullah Gülen and his followers, Joshua Hendrick focuses on one of the most important organizations in modern Turkish history, and the book comes at a moment when this organization is in the headlines for its conflict with Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP in its Turkish acronym) and its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. What started in 2013 as a disagreement over tutorial centers has quickly spread to become an open struggle among the organs of the Turkish state, threatening the very stability of the government and even the survival of the regime. Questions relating to the identity of Fethullah Gülen, the nature of the movement that is named after him, the factors that led to the spreading of its influence in key organs of the state, including the police and the judiciary, and the reasons for the Gülenists’ seemingly irreconcilable disagreement with the AKP and especially Prime Minister Erdoğan, are being widely discussed in academic and popular circles.

Joshua Hendrick's book goes a long way to answering these questions. It contains descriptions and analyses of Gülen's leadership, the social organization of his movement, and its impact on education, the economy, and the media. The book is based on Hendrick's several years of fieldwork in Turkey, where he spent time with the Gülen community, interviewed people from all levels of its organization, and read extensively on the topic.

With a network of schools that covers more than 140 countries and global investments that extend from Asia to the United States, Gülen is today at the helm of a truly global organization. Yet the key to understanding the Gülen phenomenon is to see its rootedness in Turkish society, out of which it grew. Hendrick shows that the Gülen movement is inextricably linked to Sufi traditions in Turkey, in particular Said Nursi and the order he led during the first half of the 20th century in Anatolia. Like all Sufi traditions, Nursi advocated transcending one's own personal will and seeking to become one with God. For him, spiritual purity came not through withdrawal from the material world and meditation, but through active engagement with the world. For the followers of Gülen, one's education, professional life, and work for the good of the nation, society, and humanity are all means of uniting one's personal will with the will of God. It is not a surprise that they call their movement “hizmet,” meaning service.

In well-written chapters that form the core of his book, Hendrick describes how the Gülen movement expanded its scope and influence through schools and tutorial centers it set up in the 1990s. It also mobilized small-town entrepreneurs whose economic activities have always been intertwined with Sufi networks in Anatolia. This highly dynamic and expansive sector united with Turkey's political Islam in the early 2000s. Out of this alliance emerged the AKP government that has met with such success over the past twelve years, and that has proven so beneficial to both AKP and Gülen supporters. While it would have been difficult for the AKP to register the steady expansion of its electoral base without Gülen's support, it would have been equally unlikely for the educational and business interests that are affiliated with Gülen to reach their global presence without support from the AKP governments.

Hendrick's use of the term strategic ambiguity to describe the style of leadership deployed by Fethullah Gülen and his immediate circle is very helpful. He argues that by leaving its exact boundaries, its organizational details, and the principles underlying its overall hierarchy vague, Gülen and his immediate circle have made their movement flexible, strong, and resilient. This ambiguity over the precise extent and nature of central power has also made the Gülen-affiliated institutions and organizations open and inclusive toward people and entities whose own identification with the movement and its leader may not be particularly close.

Hendrick describes the Gülen movement as being apolitical, particularly during its early formative phases. He sees their participation and success in education and the market economy as the main source of their power and influence. While true that the Gülen movement is not affiliated with a political party, this criteria alone represents a narrow interpretation of what being political means. Going back to the times of Said Nursi, the teachings and beliefs that are linked to the Gülen movement have always been political. With their deliberate emphases on “Turkish” Islam and their heralding of the principle of serving the nation, Nursi and Gülen have been powerful rivals to the staunchly secularist Kemalist path that modern Turkey embarked on in the 1920s. They have offered an alternative way of molding the Turkish nation in the 20th and 21st centuries, which is attractive to a large segment of the population in Turkey. Through their alliance with the AKP, Gülen and his followers have already reshaped state, society, and politics in Turkey in important ways. It is hard to imagine anything more “political” than this.

Hendrick's book is an important addition to an otherwise limited body of scholarship that focuses on the Gülen movement. The work suffers, however, from poor editing and some inaccurate translations. For example, “devam yol” should be “yola devam” (p. 54), “Berkeş” should be “Berkes” (p. 73), “iade” should probably be “iane” (p. 54), and Children's Day is on 23 April, not 23 March (p. 186). These and other similar errors are not so serious as to change the main thrust of the book, but they are distracting. Also, the last chapter dealing with the court case between the state of Texas and its Gülen-affiliated Charter Schools does not quite fit with the rest of the book. It may have been put there in hopes that it would make the book more appealing to an American audience, but the dynamics of the Gülen experience abroad are so different from those that apply to Turkey that the chapter weakens rather than strengthens the main argument of the book. Finally, the book could have included a closer analysis of the relationship between the Gülen movement and the AKP. It is the rupture of that alliance that is behind the current political crisis in Turkey

Most people will pick up this book to gain some understanding of the recent crisis. I would certainly recommend that they do. Even if it does not explain all aspects of the Gülen movement and its political role, Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World is full of valuable insights and explanations that shed light on an important part of modern Turkish politics.