The retirement of the President of Religious Affairs Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez, President of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), retired yesterday upon the acceptance of his retirement petition, after seven years at the Diyanet as a seven-year Deputy President and a seven-year President.

The Diyanet is a difficult institution, and the Presidency of Religious Affairs is a difficult post. Turkey is a country in which religion and state affairs have been caught for a hundred years in a fluctuating tension and, at times, in conflict. After the Ottomans, who were able to keep 72 nations together with great skill, a magnificent balance and perfect finesse, religion in Turkey (and in fact in all the countries that are Ottoman remnants) has been the most important source of resistance and revival against Western intervention. For that reason, the control of religion was not a requirement of producing some new and modern golden formula; on the contrary, it was seen as an important stage in keeping the country under control.

Because it was thought that the country could not be controlled without controlling religion, the pressures on religion took on a very intricate form. The control of religion did not always take the form of denying or suppressing religion; it was also thought that it could be achieved through a new interpretation of religion. Indeed, in many Muslim countries the imperial control of religion can be secured through a "harmonious and moderate" interpretation of religion, through the promotion of loyal clerics, hodjas and sheikhs, or through the flourishing of so-called religious communities. Today there is a close connection and correlation between Turkey's becoming independent and religion's becoming free. That the interpretation and living of religion has slipped out of imperial control is directly tied to Turkey itself having slipped out of imperial control.

There is no doubt that Prof. Mehmet Görmez's leadership of the Diyanet played a very important role in this process, in which the control of religion through different imperial apparatuses came to an end. Over the last 14 years at the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Hodja Görmez has had a serious share in establishing an interpretation of Islam as the religion of God, one that makes it possible to understand and live it without producing for any other power or person a share of authority or lordship (rububiyya).

Of course, his term of leadership, together with that of his predecessor Prof. Dr. Ali Bardakoğlu, let us give credit where it is due, has been a period deserving academic study as a theo-political practice that enabled religion to play a genuine role as glue and balance in a Turkey that harbors a certain religious, philosophical and lifestyle diversity.

While writing this piece on the occasion of Prof. Görmez's retirement, I went through my archive and found that his work had been the subject of at least some 15 of my articles. On the day he took over the post from Mr. Bardakoğlu, I had said the following:

"In many respects, Prof. Görmez's presidency will represent a continuity with his predecessor, from whom he receives the robe, but we can expect that, owing to his personal qualities, he will stand out by a difference in the process in which Turkey's democratic openings in different fields will unfold."

Later, I referred to his visit to the Erikli Baba Cemevi (the first by a President of Religious Affairs in Turkey) and to the fine dialogue he established there with our Alevi citizens with these words:

"When we recall what Prof. Görmez said earlier on the Kurdish question, we can say that he has created a new line with the special and constructive role he has taken on in Turkey's process of democratization and of developing human rights and freedoms. With his scholarly accumulation, his learning and his approach, Hodja Görmez can set in motion the soothing potential of religion with regard to many debates on the agenda. He does not regard religion as the legitimizing ideology of unjust compromises in which people give up their own rights. On the contrary, if it is to play a unifying role, he understands it first of all as a body of principles and values that must be remembered by the measure of justice. That is why his words on the Kurdish issue, "the Kurdish problem cannot be solved with the rhetoric of brotherhood," reflect very well the fundamental approach through which Islam establishes the balance of justice and peace. And this balance also contains the real formula for the role that religion will play for a possible social peace. In that speech Hodja Görmez reminded us that every language is one of the signs (ayat) of God, and that therefore denying a language (here, Kurdish) means denying one of God's signs.

According to him, "a number of problems and prejudices can be solved by bringing the 'law of brotherhood' to the fore instead of making 'speeches of brotherhood.'"

What do you say? Is this approach, which puts law and justice first, more unifying, or is it the use of religion as a legitimizing ideology so that some people give up their rights?

We must congratulate Hodja Görmez for these approaches, but I suppose we will keep following him with his original moves that leave a mark every time."

From that day on we kept following Hodja Görmez, and we truly recorded his fine and original moves that left a mark every time. We recorded his assumption of the key role Turkey has played in the new international positions it has gained in this period. We recorded the salas (prayer calls) with which he raised the morale of the resistance on the night of 15 July.

I congratulate him for the service he performed over seven years, I believe that, as a man of knowledge, he will continue to contribute to the scholarly accumulation of this country and this ummah and to the solution of its problems, I thank him, and I wish him success and happiness in his new life, wherever he may be.