The Islamic spider, the conspiracy and me

First part first. Mr. Bekdil’s latest piece that appeared in these pages yesterday was the product of a vicious cycle I have seen before several times: He first makes sweeping accusations against the Islamic/conservative camp in this country. Then I write something which attempts to show that the reality is much more nuanced. In response, he writes an ad hominem attack against me, and accuses me of being the instrument of an Islamic conspiracy that he believes that exists.

Enter the conspiracy

This is exactly what happened in the past seven days: Mr. Bekdil first wrote that while Turkey’s secularists are "programmed to think that anti-Semitism is a bad thing," all the people from the conservative/Islamic camp are fanatic anti-Semites who "won't even try to find a dividing line between ’good and bad Jews’." I argued that this is not true, by noting that anti-Semitic trends exist on both sides. In return, he likened me to a "naughty kid" who lies to his teacher. He also told an alarming story about the huge Islamic "spider" that is slowly weaving its web on Turkey, and, for reasons that are hard to understand, linked me to that imaginary axis of evil.

Since I am accused, I need to reiterate something that I have been fed up of doing so: I am not a member of any Islamic community. I rather define myself a "freelance Muslim." Thus I am not among the "army of Fethullahists" that Mr. Bekdil was speaking about in his column in pretty alarmist words. On a second note, I am not a member of the AKP, the incumbent Justice and Development Party, too. Neither the AKP pays me. Nor, for the record, do the CIA, MI6, or George Soros. (I have been accused for being "fed" by those foreign sources by the ultra-nationalist side of the Turkish media.)

However I do look at the AKP and the Fethullah Gülen community, Turkey’s strongest Islamic movement, from a much different perspective than Turkey’s secularists. They see these forces as "Islamic spiders," to use Mr. Bekdil’s depiction, which are slowly turning Turkey into an Islamic theocracy. I rather see them as the potential agents of an ideal that I strongly believe in: A synthesis of Islamic religiosity and liberal democracy. These are imperfect agents, to be sure, but they are the best ones we have at hand, and I don’t want them to be dismissed by the world because of the blood feud that Turkey’s ultra-secularists have with them.

That is the reason why I am sometimes drawn to defend these forces when they are unjustly attacked by Turkey’s zealous secularists. This doesn’t mean I endorse everything they and say and do, and any careful reader of my work (especially my pieces in Turkish) would see that I have been critical about them, too.

The more important question here, I believe, is why Mr. Bekdil and most other ultra-secularists in Turkey believe that people like me must be a member of an "army" that serves a heinous conspiracy to subvert the secular republic. The answer I find takes me to the deeper problem that I promised to explore at the beginning: Here in Turkey, most people simply don’t believe that you can be an individual with unconventional views. If you have such views, they assume, then you must be the mouthpiece of an enemy that propagates those views with wicked intentions. That’s why when faced with unconventional individuals, Turks often ask, "who is behind him?" The assumption is that you can’t be just by yourself: someone or some group must be "behind" you, so that you can feel bold enough to challenge the conventional wisdom.

Who is behind who

I am facing this attitude so frequently that I sometimes cannot help but react strongly. Recently, on a political TV discussion that I appear on every week on TRT II, Turkey’s official TV channel, one fellow accused me for being an "Americanist." The reason was that I argued that Turkey’s constitution should not define all citizens as "Turks," -- a clause which alienates the Kurds -- and rather keep silent on the identity of the people. Then I referred to the Constitution of the United States as a good example, which was written in order to define and limit the state, not the citizens. But for the gentleman that I was debating with, this was enough to be an "Americanist," someone who serves American interests.

In such an intellectual setting, it is not just frustrating to try to but also impossible to succeed in having discussions that will broaden views. What rather you have is a constant war of words about which side is really evil and which conspiracy is true. I am really fed up with this, and that’s why I sincerely hope that this will be the last column in which I will be forced to answer an ad hominem attack.