The Hassan al-Banna and Brotherhood Symposium

There was a direct relationship between the completion of the colonization of the Muslim world and the abolition of the caliphate. With the abolition of the caliphate, there was no longer any focus in world politics that would represent Muslims and be able to defend their rights. This state of being without a guardian allowed all regions of the Muslim world, one by one, to be easily handed over as a gift by the great powers.

Of course, the Muslim world displayed different reactions against being left without a caliph and against colonization. For example, mobilizing the civil society within itself, and displaying a search and will for integration directly with other peoples by bypassing its own rulers, were among these reactions. Within a short period, around the late twenties, this search and will brought to the fore the Ikhwan al-Muslimin movement founded by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt, and the Jamaat-e-Islami movement led by Mawdudi, which began in India and also accompanied the founding of Pakistan. The discourses, styles of action and social groups relied upon by both were, from the beginning, quite similar, and they were also in close interaction with each other.

These two civil movements soon formed a network of communication, interaction and cultural nourishment at the level of societies across the entire Islamic world, and in an Islamic world divided and fragmented by the abolition of the caliphate and the founding of nation-states, they kept alive a sense of political unity, both as a longing and ideal and as an act.

The books of the leading figures of both movements began to be translated into Turkish from the sixties onward. These books had a deep effect on groups that had for many years been deprived of Islamic education and thought in Turkey. The understanding of Islam, which until then had been lived in quite traditional, even rather national molds, under the influence of these translations turned into a movement that was more Qur'an-centered, voluntarist, change-oriented, and aspiring to re-establish ijtihad and the balance between reason and revelation.

In particular, the Ikhwan's influence on the development of Muslim thought and politics in Turkey has been considerable. In fact, looking at its influence on other Islamic countries, Turkey is perhaps the only place where the Ikhwan has been influential only through thought, without direct organization. In nearly all of the Arab countries where a kind of spring is being experienced today, the Ikhwan movement still corresponds to the most organized structure of civil society. In countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Algeria and Morocco, the Ikhwan guides the revolutionary processes with its own distinctive politics.

Is the Ikhwan, which has organizations in 18 countries besides Egypt, and its founder Hasan al-Banna sufficiently known? The change recently experienced in the Arab world is undoubtedly not the change of a day or two. In its background there are very deep historical and sociological formations. Since the Ikhwan has come to the fore as a result of all these changes, what is its role in the revolutionary processes?

Undoubtedly, it is not possible to understand the Arab Spring without understanding the Ikhwan, without understanding the changes it has lived through or undergone from the hour it was founded by Hasan al-Banna until today.

Today, at the Kocatepe Mosque Conference Hall, a Hasan al-Banna and Ikhwan symposium is taking place, organized by Genç Birikim Magazine. At the symposium, chaired by M. Beşir Eryarsoy, whom we know from his countless translations and books from Arabic, thinkers and academics from Turkey and many parts of the world are seeking answers to the above questions. I too am taking part in the two-day symposium with a paper titled "The International Ikhwan Movement as a Way of Compensating for the Absence of the Caliphate."

THE ASSOCIATION OF SOCIOLOGISTS

Today there is an association opening in Istanbul that I cannot attend because I am taking part in the Hasan al-Banna Symposium in Ankara. Sociologists, organized under the leadership of academics serving at different universities with the aim of enabling sociology and sociologists to take on a more effective and productive role in different fields in Turkey, are coming together under the roof of the Sociologists Association._In fact, there are many deputies under the roof of the TBMM, foremost among them Deputy Prime Minister Prof. Dr. Beşir Atalay. Turning this presence of sociologists, who are present in politics and in various institutions and organizations as never before, into a separate professional solidarity organization is an important need, because the profession of sociology also has serious problems. _Prof. Dr. Sami Şener, a faculty member in the Sociology Department of Sakarya University who has taken on the presidency of the association, expresses the association's mission as "enabling public administration to benefit more from sociology and sociology graduates to take on more effective positions," and invites all sociologists and lovers of sociology in Turkey to support the opening and the association.

From here, I too convey my best wishes for the opening I will not be able to attend, and wish them success.