The Instrumentality of Preaching as a Chain of Memory of Religious Groups: Examples of Kotku and Gülen

Sufi orders, which were traditional organizational forms in the Ottoman period, had an important function in the transmission of taṣawwuf tradition. The republican period started off with a state opposition and hostility towards traditional religious structures and forms of organizations. And with the legislation banning the sufi lodges, sufi orders as a form of organized religion in Turkey officially came to an end. However, collective memory that had been transmitted for centuries through sufi traditions went underground and continued its existence in disguise. In the new period, sufi orders were mostly replaced with mosques, where the sufi tradition started to be passed on by way of official preaching. This article is intended to analyze how religious groups today use the mosque and preaching in transmitting the sufi culture through the examples of Mehmed Zahid Kotku and Fethullah Gülen. It is to be noted that Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s conceptualization is used when analyzing the lives of these two figures as preachers and imams.