No End to Fundamentalist Threat
For some unknown reason, the state often feels threatened in this country, and the necessity of passing new legislation to provide more security arises. The destruction of Turco-Greaek relations is one of those issues that keeps popping up. If Turkey remains silent, our friends from across the Aegean find an excuse to resurrect the problem from its grave. But the most frequently encountered item on the political agenda in Turkey, which never changes its shape or form, is fundamentalism. Four military coups, including modern and post-modern and post-modern ones, have been experienced in this country, all because of fundamentalism. During the 75-year history of our republic, many political parties were shut down o charges that they were involved in fundamentalism. Since Ottoman times, systems have been toppled, reforms have been carried out and governments have been changed; however, we have not been able to eliminate the fundamentalist threat.
It is again the time for fundamentalism. A new report on fundamentalism, presumably prepared by the police, has recently begun to fill newspaper headlines and television news bulletins. The reports concern Fethullah Gülen, a reputable man of religion in our country. The security Department in Ankara conducted an investigation into Gülen's past, beginning from before Gülen was even born, made inquiries into Gülen's activities and finally created a new receiving treatment abroad based on a diagnosis pertaining to blockage in his three main arteries, Gülen is now trying to respond to allegations against him.
I am someone who is quite partial to reading reports of this nature. I have gained vast experience in journalism by reading such reports and therefore consider myself to be very familiar with the type of routine commonly used in similar reports. The first action the government takes in this country when it runs into problems with the opposition or when it deems necessary to pass new legislation to further oppress freedom, is to issue an order to security headquarters for them to prepare a report on fundamentalism. In the past, before the enactment of laws like Article 163 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), the Protection of Ataturk Law, the Protection of Constitutional Order Law, most of which were approved by Parliament, many operations were staged and later discontinued, indicating that they were initiated, indicating that they were initiated for purposes of provocation, and many extremely harsh reports were issued.
The main characteristics of these reports is that they are all very frightening and are prepared without any concern for reality. The details of a report, which was in the headlines in the 1980s, are still fresh in my mind. Some years ago two religious sects called Rufai and Kadiri received much fame in the country. In a report on fundamentalism which was intentionally leaked to the press, the following statement was included: "The leaders of these two included: "The leaders of these two religious sects, Ahmet Rufai and Abdulkadir Geylani, held a meeting in one of the southeastern cities and agreed on a joint plan of operation." The aim of the official who wrote this statement, without a doubt, was to gain favor, If this was not the case, he could have easily looked in an encyclopedia and discovered that those two individuals lived approximately 1,000 years before our time.
We also know that those reports on fundamentalism have more than one version. When positions in the government are occupied by members of right-wing parties, the copies of the reports provided to those individuals would generally be a little more sanitary in content. Another reality is that the tone of criticism used in the copies prepared for members of left-wing parties would be much more stringent. Even the newspapers that the reports are leaked to influence the tone of the report. The text given to the leftist newspaper Cumhuriyet usually contains harsh comments. Even now it is believed that the report on Fethullah Gülen has two versions, and the one leaked to the press is the more hard-edged one. The other version of the reports is much softer.
Regardless of the fact that those reports on fundamentalism were prepared under orders, it is quite possible for them to appear in newspaper headlines against the will of those officials who initially issued the order. I firmly believe that Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit is not happy at al about the publication of the report on Fethullah Gülen. Ecevit, who is an intellectual with special interest in Islamic mysticism, once declared, "These ideas of Gülen are quite enlightening." Fethullah Gülen is a person who gained sympathy from certain state circles because of his many appealing aspects. It is very difficult to place his congregation among those of the fundamentalists since they do not provide support for the RP-FP (Welfare Party-Virtue Party) concepts; moreover his efforts played an instrumental role in opening Turkish schools in many different parts of the globe. This particular time, publication of the report is not related to political pressure but is a direct result of the personal benefit that its authors are hoping for.
Even children know about the environment of defiance between the police organizations of Ankara and Istanbul. This time the loser is the Ankara police department. Most of the senior bureaucrats in the Ankara Security Directorate were suspended once it was discovered that they had illegally tapped the telephone lines of the president and the prime minister and that they were involved in activities beyond their duties. This report may be considered a warm-up for the second round of the bout for those who lost the first by getting suspended. They want us to forget the fact that they illegally interfered in our privacy and were none of their business and expect us to believe that they were punished because they prepared a report on fundamentalism.
The subject of fundamentalism, which has lost all of its originality due to its repeated use during the last 150 years, still serves a purpose as a consequence. The counterattack waged in revenge by a few public servants is causing an adverse affect on the image o the state they were assigned to protect. It jeopardizes state security by upsetting the sensitive balances in the country.
I am sure that this will all pass and that the peculiar report circulating around will eventually take its place on the shelves to collect dust, to be recalculated when it is needed the next time. Remember the good old saying often recited by travelers: "Lives will end, but roads will not." In our country the roads also end, yet the only issue that never ends is that of fundamentalism.
Lives will end, but the subject of fundamentalism will not.
TURKISH DAILY NEWS
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