On the occasion of Akif, if there is a file to be opened, let us start here

The presence of Mehmet Akif Ersoy and of the Independence March that he wrote in the National Struggle movement in itself gives a clear picture of the feelings and motives with which the War of Independence was waged. Any story of independence written or told while setting this picture aside has no military value whatsoever.

On the 85th anniversary of Akif's death and the 100th anniversary of the writing of the Independence March, there is in fact something beneficial in opening a discussion about Turkey's National Struggle movement. It is quite clear that one of the strongest references of the conservative AK Party, which has remained in power for 20 years through the free elections of the people, winning on its own the favor of the same nation, is the philosophy and understanding expressed in the Independence March. Yet the AK Party, taking the spirit expressed here as its basis, never opened to debate or stirred up the events, disputes, divisions and reckonings that followed, entrusting them to history and to consciences. Because no reckoning brought from historical events to the present has any benefit for today. In the name of not carrying blood feuds from history to the present, it in fact made a serious sacrifice and, on behalf of the conservative community, pursued a kind of politics of silence. Thus it considered it important and sufficient to bring to the fore, and underline as common values, the ground of consensus that had been reached within the historical context in which the Independence March was written.

Yet the Jacobins, who did not consider this atmosphere of consensus sufficient for themselves, wanted to maintain as acquired rights the unjust privileges they had obtained after the Independence March through fait accomplis, coups, force of arms and purges, and to revive the privileges that had lapsed.

To refute the claim that "conservatives did not take part in the National Struggle, but on the contrary stood on the side of the sultanate and even of the occupation," there is no need to consult anyone but the Independence March alone; it is more than enough. But since this claim has been voiced once again, it must be said: the National Struggle movement itself was a movement to save a Dar al-Islam, that is, the homeland, and none of the arguments and motivations to which the Kuva-yi Milliye resorted in order to bring the people of Anatolia into this struggle had any basis other than Islam.

Were it not for Islam, a people would have had no discomfort at all about remaining under the rule of the infidel.

Yet for the people of Anatolia, what made a piece of land a homeland was entirely the Islamic meaning attributed to that land; it was the Crescent, freedom, the call to prayer being recited freely from the minarets.

Freedom was a precondition for performing the Friday prayer, and in Antep, in Maraş, and in many places across the country, the fact that imams did not perform the Friday prayer because of the occupation gave the Muslim people a unique motivation for jihad on the path of saving the homeland.

In Maraş, for example, it is famous how Rıdvan Hodja lit the torch of this blessed resistance when he saw the enemy flag on the citadel, saying: "While there is an enemy flag on the citadel, we cannot be free. In a country that is not free, the Friday prayer is not performed." As is well known, the people, stirred by these words, brought down the enemy flag from the citadel and only then were able to perform the Friday prayer.

In fact, again in Maraş, the struggle began when Sütçü İmam gave the necessary response to the French soldier who reached out toward a headscarf, killing two French soldiers. The resistance begun by Sütçü İmam became, as it were, a torch of the War of Independence.

It is quite clear that even Mustafa Kemal, in the years of the War of Independence, rose on the jihad spirit of the people of Anatolia, referring entirely to Islamic values and symbols. The title "Ghazi" given to him is a title that has no meaning without the Islamic concept of jihad, and this title provided him, in the eyes of the Muslim people, both with the "power he needed," and with legitimacy and support.

Despite this fact, those who today can say that the conservative segment did not take part in the War of Independence are as foreign to this country as if they had emerged from a tree hollow. Was there anyone other than the conservative segment in the War of Independence at that time?

It is true that opposition to the National Struggle movement was also carried out with religious grounds and arguments. This shows not that the conservative segment did not take part, but rather that conservative, Islamist thought was the most dominant understanding in the whole society of that day, so that all sides entered a race to prove that they were the most suited to this understanding.

What happened after the National Struggle movement is the tragedy of this country. The whole culture of a single-toothed monster that had been fought against was surrendered to. The culture, belief, values, script and dress of the enemy who had been thrown into the sea were imported under the name of revolution. A witch hunt was launched, as it were, against the religious and spiritual values of this country; religious education was ended, the ulema, who held the position of vanguard of the National Struggle movement, were discredited and pushed out of society, and the headscarf, for whose sake the War of Independence had been started, was degraded.

All of this was of course done not with the approval of the conservative segment but in spite of them, at the cost of the lives and reputations of those who resisted. There was no democratic dimension whatsoever in what happened. Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the great poet of the Independence March, which is the covenant of the National Struggle movement, the hero of the struggle, a man of high character unsurpassable in human quality, was harassed by having spies set on his trail, and was forced to leave the country.

If there is a file that needs to be opened, it is this one. That is, the deviation, for one reason or another, from the conditions, the spirit and the meaning of the Independence March in the years that followed. The history of the National Struggle cannot be written on the basis of the thought and political stance that Mustafa Kemal revealed later. If it is to be written, it will be written on the basis of the Independence March as the common reference text that we have, unfalsified.

What that flag, that march, that last hearth meant was certainly not what was done afterwards.

In fact, we do not at all advise them to open this file today, for if it is opened, they would have to see and hear things they would not want at all.