As I told before, I am a practicising Muslim and a devoted Kemalist. Though, I sometimes feel that I should clarify my position on both issues over and over again. I generally find it annoying, but I'll do it one more time. It will also be a demonstration of the importance of Turkey in today's world.
* * *
In the sphere of religion, I believe in Real
Islam, but not its widely practiced, actual deviation.
In its pure simplicity and never-ending vitality, I believe in the Islam, which was proclaimed by an extraordinary revolutionary,
Prophet Mohammad, followed by fabulous people like
Omar bin Khattab or
Malcolm X, praised by men of genius, like
Goethe,
Tolstoy or
Shaw.
Meanwhile, I denounce the
Wahhabi extremism which has created "Islamist" terrorists like Osama bin Laden. However, I also condemn the "too moderate" interpreters of Islam, who imply the need of a demotion of integral religious exercises, like daily prayers and fasting, with false pretenses.
In the sphere of politics, I am strongly attached to
the principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey after a miraculous military victory against imperial powers, which was followed by unprecented political, social and cultural reforms.
To summarize, I am sincerely connected to Ataturk's view of racism-free nationalism, atheism-free secularism, totalitarianism-free statism, populism-free "people politics" and radicalism-free revolutionism. These ideals create and sustain an Enlightened Republic, which should be administered realistically and pragmatically, even though only Ataturk managed to do it in Turkey so far.
On the other hand, I dislike the dogmatic deviation of Ataturk's examplary vision, which can indeed be abused by a minority in the Establishment to pursue an ultra-nationalist, Islamophobe, totalitarian, populist and radical agenda. The flexibility of Ataturk's envisioned system is actually a valuable quality, but it also true that it sometimes functions as a disadvantage in the hands of ill-intentioned people.
However, the level of pseudo-Kemalist threat that is constituted by some fringe Turks is clearly lower than the level of psedo-Muslim threat that is constituted by way many more people in Turkey nowadays. I say this as a Muslim Kemalist and almost all the people who argues that "neo-Kemalist threat is more dangerous than neo-Islamist threat" are somehow connected to neo-Islamist interests. So when you read an analysis on this issue, I advise that you should be more careful: Who is the analyst? Who did employ him? What does he really mean?
* * *
Finally, Islam as a universal religion -not a political movement- and Kemalism as a national political method -not a bigot ideology- are both so powerful that there are many people to abuse them. It is natural, as it was same way for any successful mass movement in history.
What we should do is to free Islam and Kemalism from its hijackers -whether elected or not-, reinstate both of these movements to their proper places -the former to the individual conscience and the latter to the public space- and make a better social mixture. And when analysing them, we should firstly know about their true cores, that I tried to explain in this post, and not believing in everything which was superficially or maliciously told about them.
As anybody can admit, understanding Islam (the fastest-growing religion of the world) and Kemalism (the only working solution to modernize a mainly Muslim country) is crucial in our time. This is why Turkey, as the crossroads of these two movements, is vital for the future of the world.
