A guide for those seeking a sweet "peace"

The story of how the parallel structure gathered up all the credit a successful religious community can provide over the years, and on the strength of that credit deployed the entrenched authority it built as a reckless rival facing political power, is a story that needs to be understood in many respects. Moreover, we in no way overlook that the structure we are speaking of has, in its discourse, an utterly apolitical emphasis.

In the emphasis on the concept of Hizmet, an exaggerated theme of "volunteerism," "civil society" and "non-politics" was worked over and over. I have emphasized in many places before the contribution of those who cling tightly to the maxim "I seek refuge in God from Satan and from politics," as one of the ways of suspending politics as a positive value and pursuit, and who, to the extent that they emphasize this excessively, take part with great effectiveness in every area of social life. This contribution is without doubt one that distorts and degenerates both the meaning and the field of politics, and the typical example I always had in mind on this matter has been the Gülen movement.

Although it has an emphasis as apolitical as this movement's, no other movement has been seen that, by this very emphasis, is involved in politics and intimately entangled with it. This contradiction, which I prefer to call "ambiguous politics," gives serious clues about what kinds of missions the Gülen movement is burdened with.

There are those who read the Gülen movement's operation against the government as a struggle between two Islamic tendencies and who therefore think that Islam or Muslims have been greatly harmed. The long interview İsmail Kara gave to Ruşen Çakır has been one of the best examples in which such concerns are expressed. In response to Çakır's questions, Kara, while placing the conflict between the parallel structure and the AK Parti somewhere within the long history between the state and the communities and in a sense making it ordinary, also reduces the struggle the AK Parti is waging to a reflex of the state, as an essence whose reflexes, world of meaning and genes never change. Although he fairly points here and there to their differences and distinctiveness, with this reading he ends up placing the parallel structure, too, on a par with communities that stood against the state or the state's governments in the past, for example on a par with Esad Hoca against Erbakan.

Of course, that we have to remind İsmail Kara that this historiography is, after all, a choice is the least sad part of the matter.

We have to say that no similarity remains between Gülen and his movement and Esad Coşan and his community, in the respects illuminated by what we are living through today. Neither in their Islamic discourse nor in their national or international connections. Indeed, not even in their relations, as a community, with the state's secret, its deep, its Gladio, its open face.

In a struggle waged in accordance with and in the face of the values of Islam, sincerity toward God, His Messenger and the believers is the most basic condition. It is not at all hard to tell whether this condition has been fulfilled in any movement. With whom and in what kind of sincere relationship a person stands also, without doubt, revives the faculty to witness the fulfillment of this condition.

In the history of Islam, those who sided with the truth did not struggle only against open enemies. At times they also encountered betrayals, and the stance displayed against these betrayals increased the movement's purity and raised its morale even further. "Islam against Islam" has always been one of the forms of fitna that can be faced, and the resolute attitude displayed against these fitnas constitutes for the movement an opportunity for revival, renewal, a return to itself.

Today, for the broad masses of the devout and religious, there is no ambiguous situation. In the Gülen movement, especially in its religious discourse and in this discourse's aptitude to establish hegemony, people see the danger of a distortion of the real meaning and mission of a kind of Islam.

For the same people there is likewise no ambiguity in the meaning and mission of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He has a very clear meaning not only for Turkey but for the whole Islamic world and the world of the oppressed.

For that reason, there is nothing in this tension and conflict that should worry Kara. If he reads this conflict or struggle not within the history of state-community relations but within the history of truth versus falsehood, or of betrayals against the nation, he will see that this struggle, as a resolute response to this betrayal, was first of all unavoidable.

And then, instead of sitting down and worrying about what this struggle has cost because a hard struggle is being waged, he will see the good this struggle contains and thank God. If there is a struggle, there will also be exchanges of fire. What, would there be a struggle of truth and falsehood without struggle, without enemies, without enemies disguised as friends, without cost, without harm, without loss? You may be seeking a sweet "peace," but even that peace is itself something to be found in the atmosphere of that struggle.

When we pray, "O God, show us the truth as truth and give us the strength to follow it, and show us falsehood as falsehood and give us the insight to avoid it," we are at the same time arming ourselves with an awareness that Satan can take on every guise, can approach us from places we do not expect, and can press us quite hard.