Turkey's election is changing the world

Today, the inauguration ceremony of the esteemed President Recep Tayip Erdoğan, elected as the first President of Turkey's new system, will be watched with great interest not only in Turkey but all over the world.

Some will watch it with great joy and enthusiasm, taking part spiritually even if from afar; some will watch it biting their nails with great envy or digestive troubles; and some will not even be able to bear watching, but, regarding this ceremony as an ill omen for their existence, will prefer to plug their ears.

The pioneers of change do not have the trait of pleasing everyone, of looking agreeable to everyone. True leaders, those with a firm stance, upset some people as much as they gladden others.

The presidential and parliamentary elections Turkey held on 24 June were watched not only in Turkey but all over the world, of course with different expectations. We said this before. Let us also record that at present there is probably no other country in the whole world, other than perhaps America, whose elections are watched with this scale of interest and with the expectations placed upon them.

Moreover, this interest is not peculiar to these latest elections. Let us recall the previous elections as well; there was a similar interest. The 7 June election results, for example, created a veritable festive atmosphere in Tel Aviv, in the Vatican, in certain circles of Washington and in many centers of Europe, and were greeted with joy and enthusiasm.

By contrast, in Gaza, Jerusalem, Mecca, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Cairo and many centers of the Islamic world, which followed the elections with the same interest, they had caused deep sorrow and anxiety. These roles were completely reversed with the results of the election repeated on 1 November. This time Tel Aviv felt the pain of defeat in its own home.

The interest has always been there, but we can say that recently interest in Turkey's election results has been following an increasing course all over the world.

It is unnecessary even to say it: this stems from the fact that Turkey today carries the only alternative potentials to the prevailing world order and has recently nurtured the hope of being able to set this potential in motion. A glad tiding is awaited in the world, a new voice, a new breath. This voice is now rising from Turkey and the world is all ears to this voice. From this voice, the damned, the oppressed, the victims of the world, who are about to be suffocated in the world's present order, are trying to draw a breath. Given its power and capacity, it is not possible for Turkey to reach everywhere, but the places it can reach and the hands it can extend are enough to turn hope into a thousand breaths.

The new model Turkey has put forward has led to a new revival at every level in the Islamic world that has slept for a century. When hopes flourish, so too flourishes a person's belief that he can change his own destiny, that he can change the world, that he is an effective subject.

Isn't this in fact what we, as the Islamic world, need most? Those who believe they cannot change anything withdraw from life and turn inward; they adopt a cynicism justified in one way or another. The inevitable result is inertia, fatalism, a pessimistic, depressive, melancholic state of mind.

More dangerous is that for those who have severed their ties with society and the political sphere, the option of changing the world through violence can emerge. The only way to reconcile a fiqh thought to be distanced from life to the utmost with life may, for a moment, for some people, appear as a reasonable option: to force the matter. And when this too cannot be done, it becomes inevitable that fiqh, since it serves no purpose, is reduced to the level of a mental pursuit, to a text of which not a letter can be touched, an imaginary sacred of which not a corner can be touched.

At this point, the political performance displayed in Turkey has opened entirely new horizons for the fiqh of Islamic politics as well. Everywhere in the Islamic world that watches Turkey with interest today, Turkey is having a serious effect in this field too. It is influencing thoughts, approaches, theses.

Many academics or thinkers of Salafi disposition or radical orientation whom I know are revising their old ideas in the field of political fiqh through the Turkey model, and recording the Turkey model as a new ijtihad in the field of Islamic politics. Thus the gate of ijtihad, which had turned into a traditional acceptance that had been closed for centuries, is this time being forced open by a healthy path, by the demands and efforts of Muslims, in response precisely to the needs of sincere Muslims seeking a way for the awakening of Muslims in this very world.

The science of Maqasid and the new path of ijtihad

The workshop titled "The Maqasid vision and its impact on the awakening of Muslims," organized last week in Istanbul by the International Wasatiyya Movement together with the Iraqi Muslim Scholars Association, made me think of all these. There was participation at the level of ulema from all over the Islamic world. The workshop was, as it were, a response to our esteemed President's call in recent months to Muslim scholars to "update" (tajdid) certain historical discourses or approaches attributed to Islam.

Of course, the most important fiqh possibility for such an update was the science of maqasid, which envisages focusing on the purposes of Islamic rulings. This method is a path that can be opened by discovering a fundamental principle existing in the essence of the rulings.

Resorting to this path of course has some conditions as well. First of all, it is very important who wants to open this path and for what. That is, more important than the purpose of the one who set the ruling are the purposes of those who say that this ruling must change today.

Indeed, the science of Maqasid has whetted the appetite of the occupiers of the Muslim world more than anyone. As a path that would facilitate and legitimize their occupation and their rule over Muslims, or would allow them to produce the kind of Islam they want, the science of maqasid has always seemed very attractive to them.

After all, if we are speaking of purposes, we are also speaking of an infinite field of interpretation. Of course accuracy in interpretation is not absent, but the essence is sincerity. What other interpretation can those whose "purpose" is to establish rule over Muslims have than distorting the rulings of Islam?

Of course, those who concentrate on the purposes of the rulings need to possess a depth of ideology, hermeneutics, psychology and sociology equal to their sincerity.

That everyone at the workshop that put forward the science of Maqasid as a vision was aware of all these dimensions and emphasized them gave me, this time, an even greater feeling that we are on the right path.