Turkmenistan’s New Challenges: Can Stability Co-Exist With Reform? A Study of Gulen Schools in Central Asia, 1997-2007

Abstract

In the 1990s, Turkmenistan’s government dismantled Soviet educational provision, replacing it with lower quality schooling. The Başkent Foundation schools represent the concerted ef- forts of teachers and sponsors to offer socially conscious education grounded in science and math with an international focus. This case study of the Başkent Foundation schools in Turkmenistan establishes the vitality of Gülen schools outside of the Turkish Republic and their key role in offering Central Asian families an important choice in secular, general education. The paper discusses the appeal of the schools’ curriculum to parents and students, and records a decade-long success both in educating students and in laying the foundations of civil society: in Turkmenistan the Gülen movement offers the only general education outside of state provision and control. This is particularly significant as most scholars deny that there is any semblance of civil society in Turkmenistan. Notes: The author has been conducting interviews and recording the influence of Başkent schools in Turkmenistan since working as Instructor at the International Turkmen-Turk University in 1997. In May 2007 she visited the schools in the capital Ashgabat, and the northern province of Daşoguz, to explore further the contribution Gülen schools are making. The recent death of Turkmenistan’s president will most likely result in major reforms in education. Documentation of how a shift at the centre of state power affects provincial Gülen schools will enrich this conference’s broader discussion of the movement’s social impact. The history of Gülen-inspired schools in Central Asia reveals as much about the Gülen movement as it does about transition in the Muslim world. While acknowledging that transition in the 21st century includes new political and global considerations, it must be viewed in a historical context that illustrates how change, renewal and questioning are longstanding in- herent to Islamic tradition. In the former Soviet Union, the Gülen movement contributed to the Muslim people’s transi- tion out of the communist experience. Since USSR fell in 1991, participants in Fethullah Gülen’s spiritual movement have contributed to its mission by successfully building schools, offering English language courses for adults, and consciously supporting nascent civil so- ciety throughout Eurasia. Not only in Turkic speaking regions, but also as far as Mongolia and Southeast Asia, the so-called “Turkish schools” have succeeded in creating sustainable systems of private schools that offer quality education to ethnically and religiously diverse populations. The model is applicable on the whole; Gülen’s movement has played a vital role in offering Eurasia’s youth an alternative to state-sponsored schooling. Recognition of the broad accomplishments of Gülen schools in Eurasia raises questions about how these schools function on a daily basis and how they have remained successful. What kind of world are they preparing students for? How do the schools differ from traditional Muslim schools (maktabs or madrasas)? Do they offer an alternative to Arab methods of learning? Success in Turkmenistan is especially notable due to the dramatic politicization of education under nationalistic socio-cultural programmes in that Central Asian country. Since the establishment of the first boarding school, named after Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, in 1991 the Gülen schools have prospered despite Turkmenistan’s extreme political conditions and severely weakened social systems. How did this network of foreign schools, connected to a faith-based movement, manage to flourish under Turkmenistan’s capricious dictator- ship? In essence, Gülen-inspired schools have been consistently successful in Turkmenistan because a secular curriculum partnered with a strong moral framework appeals to parents and students without threatening the state. This hypothesis encourages further consideration of the cemaat’s ethos and Gülen’s philosophies such as the imperative of activism (aksiyon), the compatibility of Islam and modernity, and the high value Islamic traditions assign to education. Focusing on this particular set of “Turkish schools” in Turkmenistan provides details and data from which we can consider broader complexities of the movement as a whole. In particular, the study illustrates that current transitions in the Muslim world have long, complex histories that extend beyond today’s immediate questions about Islam, modernity, or extremism.

Anthropology of Transformation

“…In Central Asia, education, business, and development have been domains in which the lines between the religious and the secular have not always been clearly demarcated and in which religion, politics, national and international actors overlap in mutually constituting fields, belying easy distinctions between them and contesting notions that see religion merely as the instrument of politics (or business). From the 'Turkish' secondary schools of the 1990s and the contemporary mountain university built by the Aga Khan Development Network, to Islamically inspired development projects and Muslim entrepreneurialism across the region, Islamic actors and institutions occupy an interstitial social space in which they work out their religiously-inspired economic, educational, and humanitarian projects (Balci 2003;Botoeva 2020;Clement 2007;Mostowlansky 2017). 'Religion' in their work can neither be seen as the essential cause, as if they were only missionaries in disguise, nor merely a device for educational, economic or political endeavours; the two act mutually and both are constitutive of their efforts.…”