In NMH’s Islamic Middle East course, we turn our attention fully at this point toward Turkey and some of the critical questions that nation is facing in its political and social life. 

J.B. has put in our hands a terrific collection of remarks by Turks from a variety of walks of life taken from the Summer 2007 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly and excerpted below for our reflection and discussion:

ORHAN PAMUK

The Two Souls of Turkey

“As for Turkey, there have been so many authoritarian politicians over the years trying to impose one soul on Turkey, one way of life or mode of being.  Some wanted to impose Western secularism by military means; some wanted Turkey to be eternally traditional and Islamic.  This approach destroyed democracy in Turkey. It was responsible for all the coups.  To have two souls is a good thing.  That is the way people really are. We have to understand that, just like a person, a country can have two souls. These souls are continuously in dialogue with each other, sparring with each other and changing each other.  To have democracy is precisely to have this dialogue between these two souls.”

YUSUF MUFTUOGLU

“I’m one of those very few who believe that the real risk in Turkey is not Islamization, but anti-democratization…It would be misleading under the current circumstances to read the quarrel in Turkey as one purely between secularism and Islamism.  It is in reality a battle between democracy and autocracy.”

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN

“First of all, a party cannot be Muslim or not Muslim.  A party is an institution. Individuals can be Muslim, Christian, or atheist. It is personal. Personally, I am a human being who tries to be religious. But my party is not based on any religion. Our identity is that of a conservative democratic political party. We will never have a religious identity. This is a founding principle of our party: We are neither Islamic nor Islamist. There are many who think that ’since there are Christian Democrats in Europe, then these guys must be Muslim Democrats.’ That is wrong. If we placed the word ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ in front of the name of our party – the Justice and Devlopment Party – that would be using religion for political purposes. And we are opposed to that. Our religion, Islam, is infallible. But political parties and their leaders are not – they make mistakes. So, we have to separate the two.”

Here is more food for thought, quotations from readings we have done going back to the summer:

ELIF SHAFAK, “THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL” (VIKING, 2007), 81:

“We are stuck. We are stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular modernists, so proud of the regime they constructed, you cannot breathe a critical word.  They’ve got the army and half of the state on their side.  On the other hand there are the conventional traditionalists, so infatuated with the Ottoman past, you cannot breathe a critical word. They’ve got the general public and the remaining half of the state on their side. What is left for us?”

ORHAN PAMUK, “SNOW” (VINTAGE, 2004), 246:

“Will the West, which takes democracy, its great invention, more seriously than the word of God, come out against this coup that has brought an end to democracy in Kars?…Or are we to conclude that democracy, freedom, and human rights don’t matter, that all the West wants is for the rest of the world to imitate them like monkeys? Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them? I have something to say to all the other nations that the West has left behind: Brothers, you are not alone.”

ORHAN PAMUK, “MY NAME IS RED” (VINTAGE, 2001):

In Chapter 47 (p. 289-291), Pamuk has Satan say the following:

“I am not the source of all the evil and sin in the world. Many people sin out of their own blind ambition, lust, lack of willpower, baseness, and most often, out of their own idiocy without any instigation, deception, or temptation on my part…Only God, in His infinite wisdom, will understand me: Was it not You who instilled men with pride by making the angels bow down before him? Now they regard themselves as Your angels were made to regard them; men are worshipping themselves, placing themselves at the center of the world…I know it as well as I know my own name that this narcissism will end in their forgetting You entirely. And I’m the one who’ll be blamed.”