After the Soviet Union collapsed, the super powers began to fight over Central Asia’s oil and gas wealth, as well as the geopolitics of the region. The U.S. did not want Iran to have control over the Central Asian republics. The U.S. knew that it could not easily have access to the region; therefore, it used the movement of a Turkish Islamic imam, Fethullah Gülen as a perfect proxy to gain control quickly and effectively because Turkey shared the same history, culture and religion with Central Asians. However, this odd but fortuitous relationship made it easy for Gülen later to have entry into America. The U.S. used Gulen’s movement by comparing what it perceived to be a bigger threat to a lesser threat. Rather than standing by for a radical Islamic group to infiltrate Central Asia in the vacuum left by the Soviets, the U.S. choose to support Gulen’s missionaries who were armed with Turkish Sufism. Similarly, the U.S. reasoned that allowing the CIA to support Osama Bin Laden to defeat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in1979, would ensure the defeat of the Russians.
Gülen has always taken advantage of situations and used them as opportunities to spread his global Islamic missionaries’ activities under the platforms of Interfaith Dialogues, opening schools around the world, holding conferences, and starting more house mosques, as in the U.S. Gülen believes the best way to defeat the enemy is to use the enemies’ weapon. What are the enemy America’s weapons? Democratic institutions. Gülen uses them to spread his message; for example, he brings thousands of graduate students from Turkey, at the expense of American taxpayers, to study at American universities. He also developed lobbies to cultivate politicians, in conjunction with his placing American-born Muslims in the CIA, FBI, NSA and other top security agencies and with Americans electing Muslim representatives. Gülen has a highly sophisticated net of information, first using it to infiltrate his people into Turkey’s top agencies, and now repeating the strategy in the U.S. Gülen wants to create a strong lobby in Washington for the promotion of Islam and its cause in this country as well as around the world because Gülen sees the importance of power in Washington.
