A Turkish diaspora in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur... The words that former YÖK president Prof. Dr. Yusuf Ziya Özcan said yesterday at a seminar made the news in the papers. "They did not give me my professorship for eight years because I went to Malaysia," the professor was saying.

These were the unbelievable practices of the 28 February days. It is good that he reminded us of this in these February days; what we have lived through is forgotten very quickly. In those days it not only placed some people in the "enemy" camp merely because they went to Malaysia, it also revoked the equivalence of the International Islamic University Malaysia, in whose founding the Republic of Turkey took part as a member state together with the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Just think: the Republic of Turkey, as a state, takes part in the founding of an international university, contributes to its formation with the teachers and students it sends, and one night, suddenly, the students and teachers who trusted their state and went there are put on the state's blacklist, and the diplomas they have received or will receive become useless all at once. The state writes off at once everything it has accumulated there in terms of international relations.

Needless to say, in those days Turkey's prestige in the eyes of Malaysia and the peoples who contributed to the formation of this university was shattered and strewn on the ground. Turkey had completely ceased to be a country to be taken seriously. It had become a third-rate country whose word contradicted itself and none of whose promises could be trusted.

When I read Professor Özcan's words at the International Islamic University Malaysia, where I happened to be for a conference, that is, at the very university that cost the professor 8 years of his professorship, I frankly felt strange emotions. The conference is taking place with the contribution of the energetic staff of Turkey's present Public Diplomacy Coordinatorship and of the Youth Assembly of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Its subject is "Leadership and Social Change in the Islamic World: Opportunities and Threats."

For three days the role of the "lack of leadership" in the problem of backwardness that the Islamic world experiences relative to the rest of the world is being discussed. Although nearly 70 percent of the world's natural resources are located on the lands of the Muslim world, and the Muslim population has reached nearly a quarter of the world, the share of Muslims in the world's gross product is only about 5 percent.

By contrast, while there is no question of Muslims leading the world in anything, they also suffer from the problem of being unable to establish unity and solidarity among themselves and unable to organize. The sociological and political reasons for this are various, and how great the possible opportunities would be in the face of the possibility of becoming a union also deserves separate attention. All of this was discussed at the conference. In the meantime, how important Turkey's transformation is in these processes was also particularly stressed.

Indeed, at this point, how the ties that tear Muslim peoples from one another, separate them and isolate them from one another have operated, as an obstacle to the emergence of the leadership element, took on a distinct meaning. There is an extremely high desire to be of one body and to form a common will, but the nation-state administrations of the Muslim peoples have been busy raising the walls between them. What has been happening in Turkey for the last 10 years and what has been happening in Arab countries for the last year have had the effect of gradually tearing down these walls. Even the possibility of the walls being removed has opened up a tremendous excitement, cooperation and a high horizon of development among Muslim peoples. Recently there is a traffic among Muslim peoples that is increasingly reaching the level of an explosion. We can easily foresee even now that this traffic will turn into great developments, alliances and networks of solidarity in the coming period.

Although Public Diplomacy is working wholeheartedly today to restore Turkey's prestige, which was strewn on the ground 15 years ago in the 28 February period, it cannot really be said to be struggling much, because Turkey's own natural dynamics, when merely left alone, cannot help spreading into its own historical and cultural geography. The traffic that has increased recently between Turkey and other Muslim peoples is gradually fusing them with one another, and from this fusion only endless blessing arises for all sides.

The 28 February mentality had no need for a strong Turkey; this is what is clearest from this picture. Otherwise, when we look from this window at Turkey's natural map of expansion, its social capital in today's common expression, we cannot help wondering how such assassinations were carried out against these possibilities.

On that day, some of those who could not study in Turkey because of the headscarf or coefficient oppression had come to find educational opportunity at this university, whose equivalence was not even accepted in Malaysia. A considerable Turkish diaspora of victims of 28 February has formed. But that diaspora, like all diasporas in general, has gained entirely new possibilities and built a different and colorful life. Some of them have chosen to return to Turkey, but some have also formed kinships here by marrying into Indian, Malay, Arab and other Muslim nations.

These kinships, in the end, open an entirely separate possibility, an entirely separate window for Turkey. Behind them now there is a Turkey very different from the conditions that forced them to come here yesterday, and for that Turkey they work like very well-trained volunteer public diplomats who know several languages. When Turkey, instead of tracking and profiling the actions of its own citizens abroad through spies and treating them as enemies, adopts an approach that eases their lives, exactly as it is trying to do today, it makes a real difference.