Leaving the Gulen Movement After 2016: Exit Regimes and Diaspora Hybrid Disaffiliation

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  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 9: Authoritarianism, Far-Right Movements, and Resistance

Abstract

This paper develops a typology of exit trajectories from the Gülen Movement (Hizmet/Cemaat) in the aftermath of Turkey’s July 2016 coup attempt and the subsequent crackdown. Building on scholarship on new religious movements (NRMs), role exit, stigma, and contested exit roles, it argues that post-2016 Turkey constituted an “exit regime”: a social-legal environment in which affiliation became materially risky, organizational infrastructures were disrupted or dismantled, and stigma plus monitoring increased the costs of ambiguous ties. Under such conditions, leaving is often not reducible to doctrinal doubt or deconversion. Instead, disaffiliation frequently becomes strategic risk management, household protection, and network renegotiation, producing patterned forms of partial exit and concealed continuity. Empirically, the paper draws on multi-sited qualitative research in the United States, including participant observation in movement-adjacent institutions and semi-structured interviews with 47 first-generation Turkish immigrant parents across 27 households connected (to varying degrees) to Hizmet-affiliated educational and community settings. Findings show that organizational disaffiliation often diverges from ideational change, that “socially incomplete exit” is common because friendship networks remain movement-centered even when commitment weakens, and that a distinctive diaspora pathway—hybrid continuity—persists in which adults reduce involvement while maintaining children’s participation in movement-adjacent weekend schools and ongoing community ties. The paper contributes a decision-rule typology of nine exit pathways (including leadership-disillusioned insiders and diaspora hybrid continuers) and introduces media repertoires (sources followed, platforms used, sharing/avoidance practices) as indicators of concealment and stance. The framework advances research on disaffiliation under repression and supports comparative analysis of exit processes across religion-based movements and transnational networks.

Author

• Kemal Budak, Georgia Institute of Technology