In Taksim the mosque faces the AKM

Exactly 8 years ago, around these days, Taksim was made the stage of a kind of pitched battle in which century-old scores in Turkey were settled. A battlefield involving forces that were limited not only to Taksim, and indeed not even only to Turkey. Looking at the sum of the actors who joined the affair at the start or later, it was understood that a significant portion of those clashing in the square were fighting a kind of proxy struggle.

It had quickly become very clear on whose behalf the struggle, which began as being about the trees in Gezi Park, was being waged as an objection to the 3rd Bridge over the Bosphorus, the Istanbul Airport, the redevelopment of Taksim, including the Mosque, and the construction of Kanal Istanbul; yet it also seemed evident that the great majority of those in the square were unaware of on whose behalf they were acting. Otherwise, one does not even want to think that the Turkish Left or anti-capitalist Muslims knowingly and willingly stood, against the newly burgeoning Muslim capitalists, in the same ranks as the world's most frenzied, bloodsucking, colonialist finance capitalists, and one wonders for what struggle.

Those were scenes that required us to rewrite everything we know about the left, about communism, about Islam or capitalism. A frightening spectacle regarding falsehood's capacity to assume the form of truth. And an experience that offers magnificent lessons to those who wish to see how political positions have delicate balances that demand vigilance.

On the 8th anniversary of the Gezi events, the opening in Taksim of a mosque that sits very elegantly in the general appearance of the square, with its graceful architecture, has been, however you look at it, a very meaningful gesture. But there is neither any meaning nor any need nor any place for turning the gesture side of the matter into a challenge or an atmosphere of revenge.

It is true that it was a project that Necmettin Erbakan, who became prime minister in 1996, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994, promised to the public during their terms of office, but that very promise constituted one of the greatest pretexts in the coup process launched against them by the secularist segment. "A mosque in Taksim" was perceived, even at the stage of an idea, as virtually an attack on the temple of secularism.

Yet although Istanbul is a Muslim city, all the works of the multiculturalism peculiar to all Muslim cities could be seen here as well. Because of Islam's approach that describes the Church and the Synagogue as places of worship in which God's name is mentioned, it already has no discomfort with the houses of worship of other religions. Wherever there is a mosque, the exclusion of the houses of worship of other religions has never been regarded as a rule. In this matter, the historical experience of Muslims, with its countless examples, is a sufficient reference.

Yet, unfortunately, the opposite is true, and this experience is seen today as well in an understanding that is constantly reproduced. The narrowness of mind and the hooliganism of the person who attacked a headscarved woman in Nişantaşı, saying "there is no place for people like you here," are not only about that person himself. Contrary to what today's Islamophobia industry constantly tries to suggest, this shows that Muslims are constantly the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of violence and bigotry. On the contrary, Muslims demonstrate on every occasion that they have more of an ethical and legal framework that will protect everyone's rights with regard to the limits of tolerance toward others.

People who for years have opposed building a mosque in Taksim are openly saying that they cannot live together with Muslims. They are the exclusionary ones, they are the ones without tolerance. They have no qualms about saying this openly, yet they nonetheless shamelessly do not refrain from claiming to be freer and more open. Yet just as those same Muslims have never said that they cannot live together with them, they have never had such a practice either.

Indeed, building a mosque in Taksim was one of the matters openly objected to during the Gezi events. What exactly did those very young people object to in the mosque? A mosque, above all, is a gathering, restoring, unifying principle. It is not merely a place.

In May-June 2013, Erdoğan's Taksim square redevelopment included this mosque construction as well, but as is well known, the events known as the Gezi Events erupted because of this redevelopment. In the events, which lasted nearly a month, the protesters objected to the mosque construction, to the demolition and reconstruction of the Atatürk Cultural Center in the square, and to the reconstruction, faithful to the original, of an old architectural structure in the area called Gezi Park. It is certain that these events had a very traumatic effect that interrupted the AK Party government's rise in its tenth year.

By opening this mosque in Taksim, Erdoğan undoubtedly did something that could not be done even in Ottoman times in Pera. But in doing so he also did not refrain from promising, symbolically, the opening of the Atatürk Cultural Center, the very thing the secular segments had thought of as opposed to this, with its most modern and most advanced architecture. Its opening also looks very near. Symbolically, in fact, by doing exactly this, he shows the secular segments, who do not think a mosque suits Taksim and cannot tolerate seeing it, that he is far more tolerant than they are, and far broader and freer in his cultural horizon.

Having opened a mosque in Taksim does not mean expelling or excluding from Pera those who are not Muslims or who have different lifestyle preferences. On the contrary, it shows that the meaning of that mosque, which symbolizes God's mercy, embraces them as well, and that it has something to say to them too.