Minarets of discord
Goodluck Road, the, well, road of luck (obviously) in Maryland town Lanham, is now hosting the dome and two minarets of a brand new mosque. It's part of a gargantuan project financed by the Turkish government that has caused a lot of debates lately. The massive construction site is now entering its finishing stages, Turkey has shipped over specialists in Oriental craftsmanship who'll be adding the final decorative elements carved from marble and wood. Those materials also come from beyond the big sea. Although a lot of work has been put behind already, there's still a lot to be done on the 15 acre plot. A dozen more buildings should be built there until October when the official inauguration is scheduled. All of them, part of a new Turkish American Community Center which is to be situated about 20 km away from DC. Turkish PM Erdogan is expected to personally attend the ceremony.
That's been the biggest public Muslim project in the US so far. Nowhere else has such a massive Turkish religious project been carried out, and the organizers of this enterprise are not hiding their pride with their accomplishment, and their hopes that it'll help them "show America the modern face of Turkish Islam".
In fact the project resembles some modern Christian temples across America, the so called megachurches. Most often they're located in the outskirts of towns and cities, and they look like a combination of shopping malls, musical halls and sports facilities, rather than actual places of worship. Indeed, every megachurch has at least a couple of concert halls where liturgy is accompanied with live music. The events inside resemble huge megashows, with preachers acting like show hosts. The capacity of those temples is usually in the thousands, the atmosphere is hysterically cathartic. An integral part of those huge Christian complexes are various fast food restaurants, book stores and shops for religious souvenirs. I'm sure Jesus would've been proud if he made a short stroll on his way to a temple like that...
In comparison to those megachurches, the Turkish megamosque looks relatively small. It'll provide space for about 700 worshipers during prayer. The emphasis is on comfort: floor heating all around, things like that. Winters can be rather cold in Maryland. There are about 150 local and regional employees of the British construction company, Balfour Beatty, currently working at the site.
There's another important landmark opposite the mosque, also part of the religious complex: a traditional Turkish hammam with sections for men and women. In the basement there'll be a modern gym with an indoors swimming pool and a hall for yoga. Another building will serve as a hotel. Within the area there'll also be a monastery, a Turkish restaurant, a traditional Turkish cafe, a library, a gallery, a theater, five souvenir shops and an underground parking lot for 300 cars. Those Turks are definitely doing things the American way, I can tell you that! And that's not all. An outdoors sports ground, three Turkish fountains and a garden full of tulips will complete the TACC. The organizers have stated that the idea is to "show the special connection with nature" that the Turks harbor (some of the probably do).
There are about 300 thousand ethnic Turks living at the US East Coast. They're much different from their counterparts who emerge from poor, conservative parts of rural Anatolia and move to Central and Western Europe in search of whatever job they could find. Those who cross the Atlantic tend to pursue high education studies at prestigious US universities - mostly in engineering and programming. After graduation, many of them remain to live and work in the US. The Lanham center is being built for them, the organizers say, and promise that non-Muslims would be welcome too. After all, who'd want to reject all that extra cash?
However, as one might have expected, not everyone in the local community is enthusiastic with this new center popping up next to their town. The biggest pushback comes due to the noise from the construction works and the untypically huge size of the complex in relation to the otherwise quiet neighborhood consisting of one-storey family houses (known as "cardboard boxes" across the big water - you know, those that tend to fly apart at the first gust of tornado wind).
But there's more to that opposition. No surprise there either: it stems from the fact that this is a Muslim project. We all remember the huge outcry about the Islamic center in downtown Manhattan. So it's hardly shocking that we see stuff like this:
In all fairness, there's nothing like a massive orchestrated backlash against the prospect of having a Turko-American cultural center in Maryland, I'll give you that. Not as big as the one we saw about Ground Zero, anyway. That's probably because too little is known about the project at this point, both in DC and its vicinity, and in Turkey itself. Which is a somewhat curious detail, given the big budget of the project, about $100 million, which Erdogan's government is investing abroad for building bridges between Turkish Islam and the American society - and that, just in the middle of a financial crisis and rising inflation back home. Of course, the advertisement campaign for the project is to yet follow shortly after its inauguration, and the Turkish side claims it'll all be financed from private donations from Turkey. Interestingly, there was one question that seemed to piss off the official representatives of the project, and it was whether infamous Turkish Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen had anything to do with the fund. The response was sharp and swift: "No! He has nothing to do with this project, and we do not need his help for it!"
The strong influence of Gulen's Hizmet movement back home is largely due to the network of private schools offering good quality education, and not just on religious subjects but also secular. There are such schools not only in Turkey but also on the Balkans, in some former Soviet republics in Central Asia, even Africa. Apart from funding secondary schools, the movement also supports the Caucasian University of Baku (Azerbaijan), and another university in Nairobi (Kenya).
Despite his solid positions in Turkey, Gulen's image remains controversial. Some accuse him of actively working to undermine the secular character and the republican spirit of the Turkish state as envisioned by Kemal Ataturk (as if Erdogan/Gul haven't already done a great job in that respect). Meanwhile, the Turkish radical religious circles view him as an infidel, among other reasons because he met the late pope John Paul II and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. Gulen has been living on a self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.
Until recently the influential cleric used to be considered one of Erdogan's strongest allies; he was financing Erdogan's campaigns and supporting his Islamist party the AKP. But as of now, the two former buddies are in a permanent quarrel mode which culminated last year with accusations of large-scale corruption that led to the sacking of several important ministers from Erdogan's cabinet. In recent months, this debacle has been flamed up to a point where it already involves some of Erdogan's closest circle of relatives and personal friends. Some might've heard of the scandalous tapes implicating the PM in participating in a network of suspicious schemes involving a lot of money.
We could only guess when the split between Erdogan and Gulen had started, but it's definitely related to the fact that the Turkish government recently ordered the shutting down of Hizmet's schools throughout the country. It's interesting that Erdogan is putting a lot of effort and investing lots of resources to build a Turkish Muslim complex in the US, a country which so far has been considered Gulen's "territory". What's more, the project is being built in a state that's just next door to Gulen's permanent residence. It's rather telling that the construction of this cultural center started right after the quarrel between the two broke out, although of course that could just be a coincidence. But, whether the Lanham project is a manifestation of the divorce between the two former allies or not, it'll certainly be a convenient tool in their struggle for dominance over the hearts and minds of the American Turks, who are an important segment of the Turkish diaspora. Or yet another apple of discord, if you like.
For the time being, Erdogan looks like he's gaining the upper edge in this struggle - especially after his party's resounding victory at the local elections a couple of months ago. His rhetoric is taking ever more aggressive turns by the day: he recently announced that he had demanded Gulen's extradition from the US, and in his statements he claims he'll "sterilize" the Hizmet movement by cleansing all police and judicial structures of its supporters.
There's still no strong public reaction from Gulen for now. That could either be a sign that the 73 y.o. cleric acknowledges his fragile health condition and would refrain from a counter-strike, or that he's still preparing to hit back at his rival. His only comment on the matter so far has been during one of his rare media appearances, a recent interview for BBC, where he said, "Personally, I'd rather stay silent and not respond to their actions". That is, for now.