2022… and another year of life has passed

As we leave the year 2021 behind, on this first day of 2022, let us ask our Lord, who alone has the power to answer prayers, that it bring good things to our country, our nation, the world and humanity: May good things be conquered, may evils be repelled, may hearts be glad and joyful, may difficulties be made easy, may the sick find healing, the troubled find a remedy, debtors be able to pay, those who are disappointed be fulfilled in their desire, may our hearts be delighted, our faults concealed, our sins forgiven, our world flourishing, our hereafter remembered, may our inside and outside be full of light, may our end and final outcome be good...

If a new year's day is to be an occasion for an accounting of our existence in this world, our deeds, and what we could have done but did not, it must have a meaning.

The human being is a creature that lives toward the future, the only living thing that feels its death approaching step by step as it lives. Every moment we live and every day we pass subtracts from our lifespan and brings us closer to our appointed death. With our dwindling time in this world, we should feel ourselves more like guests, mortal, passing through.

When we say death, we are of course not speaking of the end of our existence. For those who believe in the hereafter, death is not the end of anything but a beginning. The beginning of the great day on which we will give an account of everything we have done, and on which, whether we have done an atom's weight of good or an atom's weight of evil, we will surely see its recompense.

The best preparation for that great day of reckoning lies in the occasions, in this world with whose cares we are occasionally preoccupied, on which we can catch our breath and, while catching it, turn back and take an interim account of what we have done or not done. The month of Ramadan, the festivals, Fridays and, of course, why not, birthdays and new years' days provide the necessary opportunities for making this accounting, and indeed they already carry warnings to make it.

Some see this warning, feel it and do what it requires, while others make of new year's days and birthdays especially a reason for forgetting and pride that leaves no room for this awareness. Even if, from here, we point to death, the only common feature of people who share no other common trait, as a ground for morality, its effect will again be on the one who knows. This knowledge is as old as the history of humankind, but it is the certain knowledge that humans are most inclined to forget.

Last year, like the year before, thanks to the Covid19 pandemic, made death a more frequent routine in the lives of nearly all of us. There is probably no one who has not lost one or many relatives because of this pandemic. At first, in defiance of those who tried, through conspiracy theories, to present this pandemic as no different from an ordinary flu, it did what no flu does, seeping into everyone's circle of relatives and taking lives. For my part, I buried my dear friend Gıyasettin Sim, who was like a brother to me, and Dr. Celal İpek together with his mother.

But this year was lived like a true autumn, with deaths from other causes that rivaled Covid19. M. Emin Saraç, M. Ali Sabuni, Doğan Cüceloğlu, Mehmet Genç, Özdemir Bayraktar, Oğuzhan Asiltürk, İsmet Uçma, Maşallah Nar, Sezai Karakoç, Yılmaz Yalçıner, Güldal Akşit, Teoman Duralı, Alaattin Yavaşça, and many familiar names whose names I cannot recall, each a star in his own realm who made exceptional contributions to our world of knowledge, thought, art and politics, we laid to earth, bearing witness to their goodness. May God have abundant mercy on them all, exalt their stations, and fill their graves with light.

There is of course no place for a long accounting of the year 2021 for Turkey and the world, but if I am asked what the most important event of this year was, setting aside the direct and indirect effects of the Covid19 pandemic, I say without hesitation: the Gazan people's having their final say against the attack that Israel launched on May 10 with the "Deal of the Century" behind it and with the winds of support from the capitulated Arab regimes, and the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan.

The preparations for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan were doubtless being made for years. Although none of the reasons for which the US occupied Afghanistan had entirely disappeared and it had not achieved any of the goals it had hoped for from the occupation, there is no doubt that the withdrawal taking place was a defeat. That the most modern war machine was pushed back by extremely primitive means undoubtedly challenged humanity's entrenched, tabooed set phrases about power, determination, patience and victory.

That the US and Israel, thought to be invincible, were routed by the Taliban and Hamas with their most asymmetric forces holds important lessons of admonition for those who understand.

Indeed, the superpower of its age, the tyrant considered invincible, Goliath, was brought down in the end by Prophet David with his sling. Although he knew his strength very well, Prophet David's strategy and skill of working well technically and striking him at his weakest point opened before him the way to a dominion that no mathematical calculation could explain.

Much has been said about the Taliban's understanding of Islam, its modernity and so on, and we too evaluated all of it here. Acknowledging its success or seeing the fact that it is the master of Afghanistan does not, of course, mean endorsing anything of it. It need not, but for some reason in Turkey even such a statement makes at least this much explanation obligatory.

It was of course a year that needs to be assessed from many angles for Turkey.

The most important matter is a course that cannot be considered very auspicious. Our being in dispute with one another on many issues is an unavoidable aspect of the nature of society. But what is not unavoidable is our deliberate style of politics aimed at the integrity of the social body. Turning even the smallest matter into an occasion for cursing one another and spewing rancor and hatred has become a part of our political discourse and culture. We had forgotten how to talk with one another, and last year did not remind us enough of the need to talk like proper people.

As if that were not enough, we have also caught a serious disease of xenophobia, hatred of refugees and racism, which we used to take pride in not having when we saw it in other countries.

This disease is more contagious than any plague; first of all it kills not the foreigner it targets but the humanity of the one who carries it. May God grant its cure.