Conference:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
My paper will mainly be on the current state and historic background of Turkish politics as well as a description of how my journal “Yarin” regards the Middle Eastern Affairs.
Right now, there are two opposing principles in action, in Turkey:
- One is the patriotic view supporting national sovereignty and coordination among equal democratic nation-states on Earth, which “Yarin”, my journal, is part of.
- The other one is Turkish globalism, which is ready to sacrifice everything sacred, like religion or national identity, at the altar of Western integration, be it with the EU or by joining the US global club of “winners”. I call it, sacrificing Muhammad and Kemal Ataturk at the altar of Jupiter, the Roman god. And as you see, this is not a unique Turkish phenomenon. Nowadays there are people in every country, who are ready to sacrifice the honorable memories of their national heroes for Jupiter. And, I fear, Jesus himself is no exception for them.
Coming back to Turkish politics, the rift line between the two principles goes through every niche of Turkish political life, like Kemalists, leftists, nationalists, conservatives and Islamists.
Because Turkish media is largely under control of Turkish big money (as is the case in every country), which favors globalism, globalist political literature seems to be more voicy, or more noisy, if I may say it, in Turkey.
The patriotic movement favoring preservation of national independence and democratic sovereignty has many supporters among government circles, intellectuals, labor and petit bourgeoisie, as well as among associations of small and medium size enterprises.
-o-o-o-
After this introduction, how do we, the Yarin team, regard the events in the Middle East?
First of all, some words on the Greater Middle East Project: We don’t believe that there is any Middle East Project offering solutions, right or wrong, to Middle Eastern ills. This term is a camouflage for the attempt to destabilize Middle East and destroy nation state entities, so as to take back history to the tribal age. Small communities, based on ethnic and religious differences are wanted to be in endemic hostilities and clashes against each other. Once this established, the US and its allies will go in as mediators and peace makers. This is the “divide and rule” politics Britain once perpetrated in India via its East India Co. Britain, then, pushed the Raja princedoms in wars against each other. And siding with this or that party she made herself the indispensable ally for every political entity in India. Finally, power fell in British hands like a “ripe fruit”, we say in Turkish.
I think, the British, with all these experiences, will help the US a lot in this neo-colonization process in the Middle East. Iraq was the first experiment for this, because Iraq was the most advanced nation of the Middle East proper, on the verge of becoming a modern nation-state. I remember with sorrow, that after a long struggle for education, Baghdadi people are now speaking “Arabi Faseeh” (the Arabic counterpart of Oxford English), a dialect of scholars, in which the Quran, the Holy Book of Moslems, was revealed. So, Iraq made a basic step, forming a national language, in its way to nation-statehood. And now it is fallen down.
Why is it so important to set the Middle East again in turmoil? It is also widely claimed, that here many regimes are more supported by Anglo-US imperialism than by their own people. For this we have to go in the imbedded ills of global capitalism, as Lyndon LaRouche pointed many times before.
At year 2000, all hopes faded, concerning the so called high-tech economy in the West. Companies, mainly operating on Internet, software & related areas, massively went bankrupt. The American motto “don’t look at Dow-Jones, look at Nasdaq” was abandoned, because Nasdaq was worse than Dow-Jones. Before that, the spectacular Bill Gates proclaimed the era of “friction free capitalism”; which means modern high-tech communication systems would feed the supplier and the consumer with fast and adequate information, so the best options in sales and purchases get realized, as it was once claimed by the theoretical fathers of free market capitalism. But then, it turned out, that the modern market, though having light speed communication means, was not “friction free”. Claims, that the modern, high-tech, virtual economy will override capitalism’s periodic crises, were all trashed. It was again realized, that classical economy prevails, and, that classical industry as basis for classical economy is indispensable. Now the economies will turn away from the “postindustrial society” myth, and will have to stop industrial deconstruction.
On the other hand, under conditions of a “global market competition” or “global dog-eat-dog system”, leading economies will need cheap energy to compete, so it is not surprising, that the Bush administration turns back to “direct colonization – direct confiscation” methods of the 19th century for oil. That times this colonization was done under the banner of “mission Civilisatrice”, now it’s done as “mission democratrice”, or the “democratic imperialism”. Not surprisingly, as people, who go from physician to physician to find a cure for their lethal illness, at the end turn to quacks and magicians for a final hope, modern capitalist economies abandoning every hope with “postindustrial” and “high-tech” society schemes, at the end turn to a 19th century style colonization. But the illness of this system is incurable, quacks and magicians are no answer, as 19th century colonization isn’t.
Can Anglo-US imperialism succeed in perpetrating this turmoil, or in other words, in perpetrating this Dark Age. Regarding the “postmodern mental confusion” the whole world suffers, it is not easy to say, it cannot.
Even in my country many Muslim scholars are recruited for the so called “Greater Middle East Project”, to make research on, how to modernize Islam. I think, despite many deficiencies, the Turkish Republic was and is the right answer for modern Islam. I don’t say everything is fine in my country, as this is not the case in any country throughout the world today.
-o-o-o-
There are claims in Turkey, on the one extreme, that the Turkish-Islamic civilization ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. What follows is total Western barbarism. So we have to work to bring back the empire and the caliphate.
There are also other claims in Turkey, which are on the other extreme, that civilization has newly started in my country with the advent of the republic. According to these, what was before, was a pre-civilization era of backwardness.
We say, neither this nor that. The republic is a normal and logical consequence of what happened in the Ottoman era. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, because it had to. And the new republic is in many aspects, a continuation of the Ottoman civilization adapted to Modern Age’s standards.
Ottoman Empire was based on Islam, though there were many non-Muslims among her subjects. The Ottoman Sultan was also the caliph of all Muslims. Since Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, Ottoman Sultans also adorned themselves with the title, Emperor of the Orthodox, thereby granting equal status to the Orthodox Patriarch with the Sheikhulislam, head of the Muslim Ulama, or scholars, in official protocols. But, because the majority of subjects and the Ottoman ruling elite were Muslims, Islam was the foundation of Ottoman power.
But despite this fact, and contrary to theocratic practices in contemporary Europe of those times, power was in the hands of a secular ruler, and not in the hands of a certain theocracy. Contrary to the practices initiated by the theory of “The Two Swords” of imperium and sacerdotium, so that medieval European history was torn in quarrels between state power and church power, Ottomans were unaware of this sort of conflict. The church or the mosque was part of the state apparatus, and clergy was subordinate to a supreme ruler of state and religion. Adopted from the Byzantine Empire, this practice is called “Caesaropapism”. And it also was the practice in the Orthodox Czarist Russia. And it had its long lasting effects in both countries.
Neither in Czarist Russian, nor in Ottoman Turkish history, there is any independent field of social action, which is outside the state power. Everything is supposed to be controlled centrally, (though things may sometimes differ in practice) and this political tradition over centuries created a different socio-political atmosphere, which was difficult for Westerners to grasp, so they preferred to brand it as “Oriental Despotism”.
Please note, that in explaining this, I don’t say, it is something good or something bad, but I say, it is something different.
Orthodox Slav and Sunni Turkish nations and states are shaped by this historic tradition, and in this sense they are both different from the Western counterparts.
A logical outcome of this tradition is, that our social life is monolithic. There are no separate and independent spheres in our social life, so every social affair gets political from its very beginning. In my country, businessman search for ways to solve the Kurdish problem, whereas the military has a say in religious affairs; politicians from left and right alike visit shrines of Sufi saints, with different shrines of saints preserved for different political orientation; leftist Sufi saints and rightist Sufi saints, if I may say.
All this are in contrast with the Shiite Iran. Though religion also have been in the social center in Iran, the rift between the Ulama or mullahs, and secular powers have always been apparent.
For a long time Iranian Ulama kept themselves outside the state apparatus, because there was also some sort of “The Two Swords”. Shiite theory says, all earthly powers are categorically illegal until the advent of the Mahdi, or the Muslim Messiah. But any power, as long as it serves the Muslims with justice and preserves security, may be tolerated. And the Ulama should keep watch on it, which means up and down they interfere in political affairs. Iranian history is branded by quarrels and tensions between imperium and sacerdotium, the Muslim style. So it was very normal to expect Iranian Ulama to seize power from the secular state one day, and form some sort of theocracy, as was the case in the medieval West. But, this also means, that Iran, one day will turn in a Western style society, much earlier than Russia or Turkey. If this analysis is much amazing for you, I should remember, that theocracy is a Western innovation, never seen in the East before. This analysis also reveals, why there was an Islamic revolution in Iran, and why it can’t be in Turkey, though I can’t say my country is “less Islamic” or “less religious”.
-o-o-o-
In 1924 Turkey became a secular republic, and Islam as foundation of power was replaced by the nation as foundation of power. “Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the nation” is what it writes on the front wall of Turkish Grand National Assembly. We have a secular nation-state now.
But if we look carefully at it, we see some features, which are more in common with the Ottoman past, than with any ideal model of secular state. as I said before, the Ottoman mosque and madrassa, or Islamic temples and high education system, was part of the state apparatus. And the Sheikhulislam was head of it. If we look at the appointment procedure of the Sheikhulislam, we see, that he was appointed by Sultan’s edict on proposal of the Grand Vizier, or the Sadrazam. Now we have a certain official body of the Religious Affairs Office it the Turkish state apparatus. This body controls all the mosques and religious education. The Head of Religious Affairs is appointed by Presidential decree on proposal of the Prime Minister. This is just to name one similarity.
Religion in Turkey is too much state controlled, and we think, it is time now to really separate state affairs and religious affairs, thereby granting religious institutions independent status in form of foundations. This for the “secular” aspect of our secular-nation state.
Now coming to the “national” aspect of the Turkish nation state, first we see Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic, say “Happy is the one who says, I’m Turk” – “The people of Turkey, who founded the Republic are called the Turkish nation” is also quoted from him. Both statements testify, that, what is called the Turkish nation, is not an ethnically homogenous entity, and that the founders of the Republic were aware of it.
After the disintegration of the Ottoman empire in 1918, the last Ottoman Parliament summit passed a resolution, known as “Misak-i Milli” or the “National Oath”. The National Oath meant, that after Ottoman disintegration, all the people, who wished to stay together to share a common destiny and commit themselves to a common self determination, form the “nation”, and the lands, these people were living on, formed the “homeland”.
This “patriotism” based on a social contract, or “the National Oath”, to stand united, and face united the difficulties of forming the Republican Phoenix from Ottoman ashes, was the very foundation of the new republic. Turkish patriotism was based on a Turkish homeland, suggesting equal rights among countries and everlasting peace on acknowledgement of mutual sovereignties. “Peace at home, and peace abroad” said Kemal Ataturk.
But later, after Ataturk’s death, this Turkish patriotism gradually degenerated in a Turkish nationalism, exalting only one ethnic background as the legal basis of the Turkish nation. The existence of other ethnicities were denied for a long time.
Now we say, it is time to come back to the “patriotic” spirit of the Turkish nation-state, abandoning the “nationalist” one. This means, grasp the entity, which is called Turkey, from its aspect of the homeland, “motherland” is what we say in Turkish, and not grasp it from its aspect of ethnicity, which is not one, but many.
Ladies and gentleman, I tried to open you up a window to Turkey, my homeland, from a different perspective, the “Yarin” Journal’s perspective. I thank you for your attention.
