The Milli Görüş Movement in Europe: Context, Activities, and Strategies

The Turkish Milli Görüş movement, led by Necmettin Erbakan and representing the main Islamist current of the country, followed Turkish migration to Western Europe in the early 1970s. For the first three decades of its existence, the organization operated as a direct extension of its Turkish mother organization. This changed when external and internal challenges during the late 1990s and 2000s ended the movement’s ascendancy in Turkey. The European Milli Görüş sought to limit the paternalist interventions of the Turkish leadership and questioned Islamist dogmas, without completely detaching itself from either. The Milli Görüş today is aligned with the AKP government in Turkey and seeks to provide a self-contained Islamic sphere for its European membership in which followers can retain an entirely Islamic lifestyle.