Borders Under God’s Hands: The Lives of the Exiled Gülen Movement Affiliates in Athens

Keywords: migration, Gulen Movement, religion, Greece, exile, Turkey, smuggling
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Inspired by the ideas of the Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, a fraternal civil society movement called the Gülen Movement (GM) grew and became a significant influence and power in Turkey. Facing persecution by the Turkish government after the 2016 coup attempt, GM affiliates became one of the many displaced groups of people who, despite the pushbacks, attempt to cross the Meriç/Evros river-border or the Mediterranean Sea to flee to Greece. Given the highly unfavorable refugee policies of the Greek government, many choose to move on in their migration journeys to other European countries. To be able to do so, they have to deal with smugglers and illegal border-crossing attempts at Athens’ airport. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in Athens, this paper looks into how these movement affiliates understand and experience illegality in their border-crossing and human smuggling experiences. Many would regard God as an active agent who ordains success or failure in each attempt. By reflecting on and relating to the Prophet’s experience of migration and the Quran, these movement affiliates’ displacement is understood as a divine form of migration (hicret) and worship. What kind of illegal border-crossing practices and ideas does such an understanding of the world generate? How does perceiving borders to be under God’s hands bring new and critical perspectives to modern borders? If all such experiences constitute divine migration journeys (hicret), what are some alternate meanings that displacement may take?