Turkey’s Silivri Prison, known for housing prisoners jailed over Gülen links, has rejected a shipment of the writings of the late Islamic scholar Said Nursi, whose teachings have inspired millions of people in Turkey and around the world, the TR724 news website reported on Thursday.
Officials at Silivri No. 8 High-Security Prison returned two sets of Risale-i Nur — the foundational texts of the Nur movement inspired by Said Nursi, who authored the books — sent to inmates by a team affiliated with the opposition-aligned Yeni Asya newspaper, citing prison regulations.
The books were returned unopened, with no specific security concern cited beyond “management rules,” prompting accusations of arbitrary censorship from the newspaper’s former editor-in-chief, Kazım Güleçyüz.
Güleçyüz, who was himself imprisoned in Silivri in 2024 for offering condolences after the death of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, called the rejection “a new example of arbitrariness.”
Gülen, who inspired a global social movement with millions of followers worldwide, died at a Pennsylvania hospital at the age of 83 on October 20. He is known for his promotion of education, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, although he spent the last decade of his life facing accusations from the Turkish government of involvement in revelations of corruption investigations in late 2013 and a coup attempt in 2016. Gülen strongly denied the claims.
Gülen was greatly influenced by Nursi’s writings and promoted reading and understanding the Risale-i Nur books among his followers throughout his life.
The Risale-i Nur, written by Kurdish Sunni scholar Said Nursi in the early 20th century, is a non-political Qur’anic commentary that has been legally published and circulated in Turkey since the 1950s.
While President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) often speak favorably of Nursi’s legacy, the Nur movement — particularly those aligned with Yeni Asya — increasingly accuse the government of weaponizing religion while sidelining genuine Islamic thought.
Silivri Prison currently holds hundreds of inmates jailed over alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Yeni Asya, one of the most prominent branches of the Nur movement, opposed the post-coup crackdown from the beginning, breaking with other Nur groups who supported Erdoğan’s purge of perceived Gülenists.
The paper and its affiliated religious community have repeatedly warned that the state’s repressive actions against one Islamic group could be extended to others — regardless of ideological differences.
They argue that Erdoğan’s past affiliations with radical Islamist circles and his consolidation of executive power have made the Nur movement, in its original non-political form, ideologically incompatible with his vision.
Although other factions within the Nur community embraced Erdoğan’s rule and remained silent or supportive during the mass arrests of Gülen-linked individuals, many aligned with Yeni Asya openly criticized their stance.
The group has also warned that Erdoğan’s surface-level reverence for Nursi masks a deeper hostility to the movement’s core values, including the rejection of political Islam and the promotion of peaceful religious revival through education.
Despite no formal ban on Risale-i Nur in Turkey, the treatment of religious texts and their senders is increasingly shaped by political loyalties rather than legal principles.
Rights advocates have expressed concern that prisoners, particularly those convicted of terrorism-related charges with tenuous evidence, are being denied access to foundational Islamic literature in violation of domestic law and international standards on religious freedom.
The incident is likely to deepen the sense of alienation felt by religious conservatives who oppose both radical Islamism and state control over religious expression.
Observers say the Erdoğan government’s relationship with faith communities has evolved into a selective alliance — welcoming loyalty, punishing dissent and instrumentalizing religion to reinforce authoritarian control.