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Turkish Religious Movements in the Caucasus and Central Asia
17 April, 2012 @ 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
with, Bayram Balci, Visiting Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
In the 1990s-2000s, different Islamic movements had the opportunity to develop and spread their ideas throughout the former Soviet Union. They contributed drastically to the religiousrevival in both Caucasus and Central Asia. Among them, those coming from Turkey were more influential, especially the Nurcu movement of Fethullah Gülen, which gathers the disciples of Sait Nursi (1876-1960), but also other brotherhoods with pan-Turkish sensibilities. Moreover, theTurkish state was the first to develop significant educational cooperation with the new post-Soviet republics. Even though it was secular, it paradoxically supported these new religiousnetworks and used them to its advantage. The core of this presentation analyzes the extent to which these different Turkish movements have contributed to the formation of new Islamic elites in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan, and how the newTurkish model may influence Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
Bayram Balci is a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is aSenior Researcher at the CERI Science Po in Paris, France. His research focuses on Turkey andTurkish foreign policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. He is the founding member of The European Journal of Turkish Studies and recently co-edited China and India inCentral Asia: A New “Great Game”?.
