Framing as a Social Movement’s Transnational Strategy: The Gülen Movement’s EU-Turkey Discourses in the Post-2016 Online Media

This paper focuses on framing as a social movement’s transnational strategy. Applying the cultural approach to framing analysis, it investigates how the Gülen movement, as a social group with restricted access to national gatekeepers, uses discourse to internationalise a domestic power struggle with a powerful opponent. Moving the struggle to the international arena presents a discursive opportunity that determines which ideas become visible and legitimate both internationally and nationally. The importance of such internationalization increases in times of conflict and the media play a vital role in this process. The paper argues that the editors of the pro-Gülen movement foreign online platforms established after the movement was forced into exile following the failed 2016 coup, use strategic framing to tailor their frames for the host context and culture. That increases the resonance of their frames and the potential of the discursive opportunity. The article confirms the previous findings that media are a crucial resource for transnational social movements because policymakers are sensitive to public opinion, which is shaped by media frames.

Religion as an Authoritarian Securitization and Violence Legitimation Tool: The Erdoğanist Diyanet’s Framing of a Religious Movement as an Existential Threat

The paper shows how a state controlled religious institution used religion, fear, trauma, insecurity, grievances, and conspiracy theories to dehumanise a religious community, and presented it as an existential threat to the nation, the global community of believers and religion, by investigating the case of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs’ (the Diyanet) securitizing role under the authoritarian Islamist Erdoğanist rule. The article provides an empirically rich analysis of the Diyanet’s construction of the Gülen Movement (GM) as a source of sedition (fitne), corruption (fesat), mischief, a social disease, and finally, as a traitor and puppet of the West that constantly conspires against Turkey, Islam, and the Muslim World. By securitising the movement, the Diyanet legitimised the authoritarian and violent actions of the Erdoğanist regime against the alleged movement members.

Reactive and Aggressive Years of the Akp

This chapter aims to read the AKP period of Turkey in light of a combination of domestic and foreign policies, with religion at the forefront. In these two chapters, the concept of ‘state of exception’ is employed to understand the authoritarian ethno-nationalist Sunnification of Turkey under AKP rule. Indeed, throughout the chapters the new positions of state institutions such as Diyanet, the role of the Gülen Movement, the role of Ahmet Davutoğlu in the new Turkish foreign policy and the leadership of Erdoğan constitute the priorities, since these are the main determinants in an understanding of the relations between the Balkans and Turkey since the early 2000s.

Defensive and Active Years of the Akp

This chapter aims to read the AKP period of Turkey in light of a combination of domestic and foreign policies, with religion at the forefront. In these two chapters, the concept of ‘state of exception’ is employed to understand the authoritarian ethno-nationalist Sunnification of Turkey under AKP rule. Indeed, throughout the chapters the new positions of state institutions such as Diyanet, the role of the Gülen Movement, the role of Ahmet Davutoğlu in the new Turkish foreign policy and the leadership of Erdoğan constitute the priorities, since these are the main determinants in an understanding of the relations between the Balkans and Turkey since the early 2000s.