Impressions from Saudi Arabia

It is clear that Saudi Arabia is lately one of the countries most affected by developments in the Middle East. It is both one of the most affected and, in fact, one of the countries with the greatest capacity to influence. While differences in management and outlook within the country lead to different policies in different periods, it also plays a role in all developments in the region, good or bad. The changes it has especially brought about and supported in Yemen and Egypt have today produced crises in the region itself that need to be stopped. When the feeling of having been deceived, caused by the direct or indirect support the US has given Iran in all areas of dispute, is added on top, the country finds itself facing a need to seriously review its own policies and situation in many areas. While the US's attitude in its regional policies, which pays no regard whatsoever to the rights of its own allies, has seriously disappointed Saudi Arabia as much as Turkey, the passage in Congress and the House of Representatives, despite Obama's veto, of the bill allowing relatives of those who died in the September 11 attacks to file suit against Saudi Arabia has led to a great anger and rage against the US rising not only at the level of government but also among the people of the country.

On top of the long-lasting low oil prices, such developments have also created a need for serious economic reforms in Saudi Arabia. New taxes that the public is not at all accustomed to have been imposed. A serious visa fee is being imposed on those from abroad who wish to perform a second umrah within three years. A few days ago Saudi Arabia went out to borrow through long-term government bonds, and a record demand, almost four times the amount offered, came for this bond issue.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, also taking into account the dangers that the new realities of the world could leave the country facing, is in a kind of search for a paradigm in management and in the use of the country's resources. For it is thought that, as things stand, the country's resources are not being used with sufficient efficiency to carry the country into the future. To this end, a kind of search-research-development work is being carried out within the framework of the 2030 vision. In this context, a few days ago, together with our Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Veysi Kaynak, we took part in a very productive meeting on Islam and Waqfs (foundations) at the Mecca Chamber of Commerce conference hall, located between Mecca and Jeddah.

At the meeting, where İzzet Şahin of the İHH, as a civil society organization from Turkey, conveyed Turkey's experience of civil society and waqfs, our Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Veysi Kaynak also gave a talk on Turkey's waqf model and experience from the Ottomans to the present day. He said that although the Ottomans, and Islamic societies in general, deserve to be described as "waqf civilizations", today we are not at the desired level in the field of waqfs and, unfortunately, have fallen behind Western countries. This was in fact an issue that most of the participants were also aware of and were seeking and discussing remedies for. Without doubt, as the Islamic world and Turkey, which pioneered in the field of waqfs, we must make more effort on this. In proportion to our economic power, we must put our hands under the stone more. We must show that the expression waqf civilization, which we use when describing the Ottomans, has a counterpart today as well. In fact, signs of this have begun to be seen in Turkey. Against the 50 thousand waqfs inherited from the Ottomans, a total of five thousand waqfs were established in the Republican period. The revival and further development of waqfs depends also on the healthy and strong formation of the necessary motivation for this. Kaynak underlined that, for this, more important than waqfed lands, goods and real estate is people's dedicating themselves to charitable work. The biggest share in the increase recently seen in waqf activities in Turkey belongs to the relative increase in people who dedicate themselves in this way to a charitable cause.

WE ARE LIKE TWO STATES, ONE NATION WITH THE PEOPLE OF SAUDI ARABIA

Everyone we were able to meet in Saudi Arabia is as engaged as can be with Turkey and the agenda of July 15. So much so that on July 15 everyone, so to speak, became Turkish. Everyone has an anecdote about how much prayer was offered in the Kaaba and in Medina the Illuminated. As they tell them, we listen and are moved. Given the support and solidarity Erdoğan showed, both at the UN meetings after the failure of this coup attempt and later against the September 11 law that the US passed against Saudi Arabia, we have become, with the people of Saudi Arabia, so to speak, two states, one nation, as we are with Azerbaijan.

THE JUDICIARY THAT EXECUTED THE SON OF AN EMIR

Meanwhile, one of the topics on the agenda in Saudi Arabia is the execution, by qisas (retaliation), of the son of an Emir who killed someone in a fight two years ago. That the relationship between the judiciary and the dynasty takes place in complete independence, and that the royal family does not or cannot intervene even in such a process where a matter of life and death is at stake, in fact gives the dynasty much more strength in the eyes of the people.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Rumi, the former president of the Court of Appeals, with whom I chatted at a meeting last evening,

states, with a faint pride, that such events are in fact commonplace in Saudi Arabia. As I listened, I concluded that they have a right to this pride. Al-Rumi, aware of how it is perceived from the outside, said that because of the weight of the responsibility that Sharia adjudication in Saudi Arabia contains,

"to apply God's ruling in the best way,"

it is the world's most closed law to outside influences, and that this ensures the highest-level application of what is called the supremacy of the judiciary.

No one, including the royal family, can have a propensity to interfere in a ruling that is a manifestation of Sharia. Judicial procedures do not take place with some kind of Orientalist "kadi justice" typology as is supposed; on the contrary, rulings requiring execution or amputation pass through the control of a panel of 13 people, consisting of a 3-person lower court, a 5-person court of appeals and a 5-person supreme court. This shows that the judiciary passes through such an institutional procedure as well, in addition to a body of rules, like Sharia, open to all, transparent and objective.

Al-Rumi explained that the emir or the king never attempted to intervene in the ruling, but that the only thing that could save him was the forgiveness of the victim's family, that although an offer of up to 250 million dollars was made to the victim's family for this, it was not accepted, and so there was nothing left to be done.

As he looked at me as if to say, "And how does it work with you?", I could only say a sentence or two about how the parallel judiciary tied this matter to Pennsylvania. Then I said, perhaps from now on, God willing, the possibility has emerged of the formation of a judiciary independent of all of us, truly looking only to the law, independent and impartial.