Levent Gültekin: Political Islam has gone bankrupt

Nazan Özcan
 
Journalist Levent Gültekin, who has been a follower of political Islam for years but has moved from his old neighbourhood having seen how political Islam has thoroughly polarised Turkey and has become fully devoid of content, says in his new book “Honourable Exit”, “Come, let us be democrats. This country is all of ours.” And, making his own story into the touchstone, he suggests ways forward for Muslims who are exasperated by the ruling party’s insane implementations. I spoke to Gültekin about the point reached by political Islam and its implementations in Turkey.
 
- What do you mean by an “Honourable Exit”?
 
We all inhabit our own neighbourhood in faith and ideological terms. We have become alienated from one another and we are suffering great harm from this. I say let us now exit our rooms and talk, debate, reach understanding and make this place a country that is inhabitable for everyone. But, in exiting, we must not also become engulfed in a feeling of defeat. Accusations like, “They sold out the cause,” “They could not stick it out in their own neighbourhood” or “They were not wanted there, anyhow” should not be made, because they detract value from self-criticism or apology. When people who are party to debates having an ideological, faith or sectarian slant abandon this stance and if this conduct is greeted with wisdom, the right to an honourable exit will also have been granted.
 
- Will the book strike a chord in your old neighbourhood?
 
We look at the spokespeople for each neighbourhood and form opinions. We look at those in the AKP who make the most noise and are the most rigid and think that all pious people are like that. They are not. It will strike a chord, because there is currently severe trauma caused by the sense of defeat in the neighbourhood.
 
It has harmed faith
 
- Defeat?
 
Yes, they have been defeated. There was a very serious assertion and exceptional self-confidence among Islamists that the country’s issues could be solved through faith. The AKP has given lie to the assertion that the country’s issues would be solved through faith. Never mind solve, everything is now going to ruin and it has turned into a monster that is also devouring faith. It has harmed and devalued faith. So, people who defended this assertion for years are undergoing great trauma. A far greater trauma than is imagined from the outside is being experienced in the AKP base. On signing days, half of those who bend down to my ear say, “I am also from your old neighbourhood, brother, and I now feel really bad and don’t know how I’m going to get out and where I’m going to go.” A head-scarf-wearing reader of mine sent me an email: “I have voted for the AKP for years and they even gave me my job, but it has reached the point where I can’t take any more.” There are hundreds of examples like this. You see, Islamism has gone bankrupt.
 
- Political Islam is finished, you mean?
 
Yes. Islamists no longer have anything to say about society or the country. They have not managed to do anything new and different over education, the economy and social peace. The only thing they boast about anyway are roads, bridges and airports. There is actually no need to be Islamist or pious to make these! And this is not the normal end of an ideology. The bankruptcy of an ideology in fact turns into the bankruptcy of people. For example, young people say, “Religion was my sole quest and now I am left without a quest. I don’t know what I’ll do.” And this is the basic aim of the book: To tell those people not to worry, they will not lose their entire faith on exiting that place, and there are other paths.
 
- OK, you say there is trauma. Plenty of conservatives have also been sacked under decrees with the force of law. There are people who are grappling with hunger, but why is there no clamour?
 
In Turkey, there is in general no culture of striking back and seeking rights. There is also the fear that poverty gives rise to.
 
- Is there anything left to fear? They have lost their jobs, anyhow.
 
For one thing, they are distraught and have lost their jobs. You expect resistance from that person who has been condemned to hunger. This is hardly likely. For example, an academic who was dismissed under a decree with the force of law tells me, “I can’t work any more even if they restore me to my post. I have lost my faith in this country.” If you tell that person to resist and seek their rights, nothing happens. Had this decree with the force of law emanated from an Ataturkist, then there may have been massive resistance.
 
The destruction destroys resistance
 
- That is precisely what I am saying.
 
The pain, destruction and bankruptcy caused by one of your own is harsher. That destruction also destroys resistance.
 
- All well and good, change your preference, then. Let there be an electoral impact.
 
Polarisation has reached extreme proportions. One of my reader’s mothers was sacked under a decree with the force of law. The reader says that her mother is going to vote for the AKP again. She says she is prepared to remain unemployed so that the country does not turn into Syria. She says if Tayyip goes they will turn the country into Syria.
 
- The country is just one notch behind Syria, anyway!
 
In Turkey, the Islamist, nationalist and nationalist component makes up eighty per cent. This eighty per cent says on television from morning to night that the mastermind is out to divide the country and Erdoğan is resisting. This fear that Erdoğan is using has taken people hostage. In one sense, too, thanks to the polarisation, they ask how they are to vote for the CHP.
 
They want trust
 
- OK, not for the CHP, but let them not vote AKP.
 
But there has to be a flow to somewhere for a result to emerge. This is exactly what is blocking things. It cannot get out. For example, if you tell an Ataturkist not to vote for the CHP, they’ll ask who else they are to vote for. When we have chosen a party out of identity, faith and ideology, it is hard to exit that place. The way to ease the path to an exit is for opposition parties to give up stressing identity, faith and sect and to show that they are really libertarian. People want trust to be instilled. Currently, unfortunately, a portion of the people who would speak up are in prison or are banned, etc. As to the politics that is able to speak, it is incapable of instilling a sense of trust. Because it is unable to instil this feeling, people think that the AKP is the sole option. The opposition needs to get across that if there is no law the country will collapse and if the country collapses you may not even be able to get the 1500 lira you get today. Or, it is not managing to get across that they vote for him out of faith, but this man is destroying faith.
 
- Are you not being a little unfair? You say in the book, “Those on the left made no effort to reach out to us.” What were those on the left to do? Were there to go to each and every door? There are magazines, newspapers and books. Is the question, “Why didn’t you read them?” not to be asked? The CHP speaks of the law every day. Indeed, there has been self-criticism for years within the CHP over the inability to reach out to the people.
 
This means it was inadequate. What you do is important. Anyhow, this is not an accusation. It is a finding. I wish from the bottom of my heart for the left to be successful. The left is a country’s conscience. But it is not enough to be a conscience. For example, were I on the left, I would think: “I have been speaking of freedom for years and I have done so with society in mind. When I speak of equality, I do so conceiving the poor person’s child to be the same as the rich person’s child. When speaking of workers’ rights I am defending your rights. So, how come I am made out to be the enemy of the people?” This means they are not managing to resonate in the right places. It is not effort that counts. If your effort finds no take up and you say, “One minute, I am doing something wrong,” you have no right to say, “These people don’t understand me.” For example, this really upsets me. Vedat Türkali died at the age of 95. He devoted a lifetime trying to secure a place for certain values in this country and, when he died, the country had not moved forward by an inch. How sad! While I was writing this book, I kept on asking myself: “Why am I unable to reach out to people?” The language in my columns is harsh, so I said, “Let me write the book in a softer language.” This was because I was looking for a means to reach out. The left has not tried this. You must find a way to speak to those who are diametrically opposed to you. Otherwise, you will lose.
 
“There is no such thing as true Islam”
 
- Well, can you explain the returning cliché, “This is not true Islam?” The same book for 1500 years and we are unable to reach agreement!
 
There is no such thing as true Islam. Faith is something that takes shape in accordance with a person’s character, spirit, perception and approach to morality. For example, if you are a person who is inclined towards violence, Islam will turn you into a monster, because you will find a whole host of verses slanted towards violence there. Islam has actually been lost. Islam has been debased and reverted and is now debasing Muslims. Islam said, for example, that adultery is canonically forbidden. That is all. Somebody piped up and said if adultery is forbidden then roads that lead to adultery are also forbidden, for example women and men sitting together some place is forbidden. Somebody else said if adultery is forbidden then men and women shaking hands, which leads to adultery, is also forbidden. And they imposed this on religion. For example, I know that one of the men who issues fatwas has a high libido and married three women, etc. A man with a high libido pronounces that you cannot kiss your seven-year-old daughter. Why?
 
- Why, indeed?
 
Because the man is aware of his own perversion and sickness! He thinks that everyone is plagued by this sickness. and he preaches it to society as faith. Many such individual defaults have been appended to the Islamic faith and become ingrained. That is, faith that was as big as a hazelnut has now turned into a snowball the size of a mall. Off you go and find the hazelnut in that huge snowball. Good luck for trying, but you cannot.
 
- In recent times, sexual fatwas keep on being handed down having to do with women and children. You can’t help wondering. First of all, who do they think they are, and, secondly, have they nothing better to do?
 
Also, will somebody emerge on the ruling party side who criticises this? There have always been these things. The reason that we are now more uncomfortable is the feeling that the power of the state is behind it.
 
- No, what I am uncomfortable with is the saying of such things about women and children!
 
Faith has put up a wall between women and men through nonsensical interpretations. There is a wall, you see, and there is a woman that is ever present in the mind, that is, they think of her as a sexual object. This can make a man crude and merciless. Thanks to this, they can say things that are uncalled for. For example, I think that the Middle-Eastern dictatorships are rooted in this crudeness, and this crudeness is rooted in distance from women. This is also essentially something that debases Islamic society. There is by now a made-up religion. Think, there are hundreds of people in the entourage of a clown masquerading as a man of religion, but there is nobody in the entourage of educated, enlightened, wise and intellectual people!      
 
- So, why is it that way?
 
Religion is a bit like the poor people’s drug. You hand over your cares to God and forget. Then, you do not have to deal with them. We are currently experiencing this to the maximum extent. Religion has been emptied out onto the people in its most vulgar and wretched state. Society is drowning in this just now. They imagine that faith is the cure for every ill. No, it is not.
 
THEY THRIVE ON EVIL
 
- You say in the book that, “We have a middle-school level understanding of religion.” What are we to call this culture that is coming into place?
 
There is no depth, no thought, in their comments, positions and what they understand of religion. Lumpenness reigns. It is an understanding that lacks values and lacks identity. There is an understanding that exalts evil, because it itself thrives on evil. If a country produces evil, evil people emerge from there. Currently, evil gushes forth from the ground, because the ruling party thrives on evil. Because the ruling party no longer has the chance to do anything good.
 
- Why not?
 
Because everything that is beneficial to Turkey is to the ruling party’s detriment. For example, putting the law in place is beneficial to the country but detrimental to the ruling party. Because, if the law is put in place, they will first summon the ruling party. Democracy and freedom are beneficial to the country but, if they exist, the ruling party will be called to account first. What is beneficial to Turkey is good education, but it can’t do this because it needs people who will obey it. Everything that is to the ruling party’s benefit is detrimental to the country. Enmity, strife, getting people at one another’s throats, lawlessness, fear, duress. Also, the media instils lumpenness in society from morning to night. With evil pouring down like rain on what you call the individual, they cannot remain good. It is a tall order.
 
WHICH INTERPRETATION OF ISLAM?
 
- There is one verse that the ruling party repeatedly cites: “The believer is for sure superior to the non-believer.” What kind of superiority is this?
 
I grew up with that feeling. We are superior and we are destined for heaven. Religious prescriptions must be reinterpreted.
 
- In that case, why are they not reinterpreted?
 
Because there is no authority in the Islamic world to interpret religion and faith in accordance with the needs of the age. Nobody has enough power to do this, either, because there is a huge dispute. Secularism is very important for this reason. You look at Muslimism and there is both Adnan Oktar and there is Islamic State. There is Fethullah Gülen and there is Erdoğan. Whose interpretation of Islam are we going to accept?
 
- What, then, is true Islam? Let somebody explain.
 
Tayyip Erdoğan is not an opinion leader. Also, there is one Islam but millions of Muslimisms. We cannot create a relationship with society going by what Erdoğan says. If Erdoğan is trying to poison society, we will lose if we set out to quarrel with Erdoğan, because his piles of money, state resources and media are so powerful. Of course, he will try to stoke up that evil, and is doing so, because dictators cannot rule a healed, peaceful society.