Rant Number 580 3 April 2014
‘A man who prays is a coward’. A forthright statement. All the more striking for having been uttered by a Muslim: Kemal Ataturk, the creator of modern Turkey. He meant of course Salat, Muslim prayer. One of the five pillars of Islam. Considering that the Turks, a martial race, conquered numerous countries in the name of Islam, I wonder how Kemal justified that opinion…
Ataturk’s hatred of religion was radical. ‘Shadow of God’ was the grandest, most megalomaniac of the Ottoman Sultan’s titles. By 1922 the Sultanate was abolished. Two years later, the Caliphate went. Both struck down by Kemal Ataturk. A man who still casts a huge shadow over his country.
A Chatham House session discussed Turkish politics. The only one to mention Ataturk was the priest, in the Q&A. ‘Barish evde, barish duniada’, I intoned, quoting another, more congenial slogan by him. ‘Peace at home, peace in the world.’ A victorious general and saviour of his country, Kemal was astute. He knew the paramount value of peace. In power, he stuck to it. Not so Recep Erdogan, the current Prime Minister. A divisive and polarising man at home, and perhaps a leader who looks forward to war abroad, in Syria, I speculated.
Knocking out the Caliphate, termed ‘a medieval cancer’, was only the beginning of Ataturk’s assault on organised Islam. Another target was the powerful tarikats, the Sufi orders or fraternities. (Or the freemasonry of the East, if you like.) Their chiefs were hanged. One resisted: Kurdish Sheikh Said, a master of Nakshibandi dervishes. In his biography of Ataturk, Lord Kinross describes the uprising. Said felt the overthrow of the Caliph and the quashing of Sharia laws as appalling blasphemies. Proclaiming himself the Mahdi, an eschatological avenger much debated in Islam, Sheikh Said marched under the green banner of the Prophet, his sword-wearing followers grasping their Qur’ans. A doomed lot. Ataturk’s armies were bigger and better equipped with artillery and modern weapons. The Kurds were routed and Said captured. Before being hanged in Diyarbakir the putative Mahdi briskly told his judges: ‘We’ll settle scores on Judgment Day.’ Insh’allah.
Has Sheikh Said being reincarnated, I wonder? In a modern, trendy and up to date guise? Could he possibly be Fethullah Gulen? Some call him a cult leader. Others an educator, an inspired and influential teacher. Although he modestly shuns the honour, is also rumoured to be the awaited Mahdi. What is certain is that Gulen has established a vast network of schools, businesses and supporters. They are all over Turkey and abroad, too. Unlike Sheikh Said, Gulen rejects military jihad. Instead, he claims to spread Islam by da’awa, peaceful invitation, teaching and proselytising. A nice, sweet reformer? Or a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Time will tell.
As Christopher de Bellaigue writes in the NY Review of Books, Erdogan’s party and the Gulen movement share ‘a modernising Islamic ideology’. True but that ideology implies a gradual rolling back of Ataturk’s principles. Not quite going back to the Caliphate but making religion and its symbols more prominent in the State and public life. Thus eroding and undermining Kemalist secularism. Something Ataturk would have fiercely loathed and resented.
The two chaps used to be allies but they have fallen out. Erdogan fears Gulen’s rivalry and intrigues. Gulen has cursed the PM. So Erdogan is out to get the Gulenistas, accused of having created a state within a state. Scandals and conspiracies are afoot. Are the wolves beginning to devour each other?
Yet, despite Gulen’s thorn, Erdogan has been phenomenally successful. The last regional elections have confirmed his popularity. As a CH panellist remarked, the vast rural masses, lowly and pious Turks, see him as their champion. Unlike Europe, where the left supposedly stands for the poor, in Turkey it is the conservative, religious right which does. A sure recipe for success. Erdogan may be divisive internally – middle class secularists abominate him - but he scores high at the ballot box.
Where could Erdogan come a cropper? Foreign military adventures Ataturk wisely warned against. After throwing out Greeks and other invaders, he desired peace with his neighbours. And his successors followed suit - Cyprus being the only exception. In my question I asked about Syria. Turks shot down a Syrian plane recently. Was that a provocation? Designed to trigger off an invasion, perhaps? It would be a not-so-neat way to sink Bashar Assad at last. That Turkey is closely tied to America and NATO is a fact. Ex-Ambassador Reddaway disagreed. But what I did not state was the motivation behind my question – once again, eschatology, the thrilling science of the End Time.
Syria and its capital, ancient Damascus, once part of the Ottoman Empire, are central to certain apocalyptic expectations. Syria was the launching pad for war on Byzantium, the Christian Eastern Empire. Many hadiths, sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, testify to that. Such prophecies, according to Sheikh Imran Hosein have a contemporary relevance. They adumbrate a Turkish, NATO-backed attack on Syria. Might not then Tsar Putin, the feisty leader of the second Rome, a resurgent Byzantium, not intervene to save Assad’s Syria?
So, a bloody scenario designed to usher in the appearance of the awaited Muslim redeemer, the Mahdi. Prophet Issa – not really the Jesus of Christianity but an approximation – will he then descend on a white minaret in Damascus, to aid the Mahdi, another shadow of God on earth, in dispatching Dajjal, the awful Antichrist of Islam?
Mighty battles and cosmic clashes ahead, then?
The priest he is not a coward - he believes in prayer. So he prays for barish, the true peace of God on earth.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
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