Aliya and his legacy

Five years ago, around this time, Aliya was commemorated by the Bağcılar Municipality with a fine symposium on the fifth anniversary of his passing to the eternal realm. At that symposium, where the emphasis came to the fore that in order to commemorate Aliya on anniversaries after his death one must first understand him, I had thought that Aliya would probably be commemorated far more in the coming periods, but that none of this could be a guarantee that he would be better understood.

In fact, this situation was not true of Aliya alone. After a certain point, figures whose lives have come to an end and who have passed into history are fated to become the objects of feelings such as love, respect or hatred rather than of understanding. Indeed, what we call understanding is itself not something that takes place independently of these emotional attitudes.

It is a fact that a human being, before dying, is a wholeness that is never completed. Death, depending also on the manner of death, in a sense completes the whole meaning of a life. But one must know that this too is not absolute. That is, a person who has died is understood anew at every moment according to his work, according to the effect and consequences of his work. For it is never clear on whom, when and in what way the work will have an effect. Moreover, every understanding makes new additions to that person's existence. The work continues to be written and shaped, independently of that person's intention and will alone. Although it is true that the book of deeds closes with death, works of the kind of ongoing charity continue their effect on the person's own existence.

Aliya's work is without doubt of the standing of a tremendous ongoing deed. The work he put forth through his life, his struggle, his ideas and his books is like a message sent to us, demanding to be understood and reflected upon.

Five years after the symposium it organized in Istanbul, the Bağcılar Municipality this time held it with a broader participation in Sarajevo, right next to Aliya's resting place, in cooperation with Mladi Muslimani and the International University of Sarajevo. Commemorating Aliya, trying to understand him, in an environment where the memories of him are still fresh, with their pains, their joys, their beauties, is of course an entirely different feeling. The participation and interest in the symposium from both Turkey and Bosnia is very intense. Listening to memories about him from his daughters and his sister is an entirely different beauty.

The words of Dino Merlin, "We would have gone on taking darkness for light, Aliya, had it not been for you," keep ringing in my ears. Indeed, seeing Aliya's impact on his own age and on his own people, these words find their meaning as perfect words expressing a reality beyond dry literature. Those who find the struggle he waged that day meaningless are probably those who say that had he not declared independence, so many people might not have died, and who in fact merely go on taking darkness for light. Yet in the realms he illuminated and lit up, how meaningless, how unnecessary such questions are.

With your permission, I would like to repeat, five years later, what I said on the occasion of the symposium five years ago:

"Exactly 10 years have passed since Aliya, that beautiful human being, that wise king, departed from this world. Yet in those five years that have passed, his name has been mentioned so many times in Turkey, has been embraced so much, that he has continued to occupy far more space among us than most of the living, on conversation agendas, in documentaries. Nearly all of his books were translated into Turkish during this time, read and discussed. The bridges of communication and transportation he started between Turkey and Bosnia in his lifetime began to function more and more. In many of our provinces and districts his name was given to avenues, streets, mosques and parks. All the personal, official distances in between gradually lifted, and as "Aliya" it became a name thoroughly "familiar" to all of us.

This did not come about by force. It could not have by force anyway. It is simply impossible for anyone who listens to a story or two about his life, his personality and his experiences not to embrace him, not to be attached to him wholeheartedly. He is like someone who, showing a fine humility from far loftier floors, from exalted ranks, has descended into our world, and from there has knocked at the door of our heart. With what insolence could one say "we are not home" to the door he knocked on?

In an environment where the culture of politics was being determined by the struggle for personal power, Aliya practiced "politics as a responsibility that cannot be avoided for the sake of values" in the finest and wisest way. The politics he pursued not only secured the highest benefit for his own people and his own friends, it pointed out the meaning and worth of a quality enmity even to his own enemy. How much his enemies took these signs is, of course, a separate matter for debate.

Because of this quality he displayed in politics, the epithet Wise King was attached to Izetbegović. This was in fact an expression of great appreciation pointing to an impossible combination. Because in the Western political tradition one hardly encounters an example where wisdom and kingship come together. Those who are kings cannot have any value other than remaining in power through their personal ambitions. And those who are wise are hardly given any share of kingship.

Yet Aliya's understanding of politics was based not on building a utopia with a totalitarianism peculiar to the philosopher-king, but on a wisdom aware of the dramatic reality of the world and conscious that politics can begin from where one stands and with the means at hand. Thus, however impossible the meeting of wisdom and kingship in Western history may be, he in fact showed in practice that, as in the person of Aliya, it is within a closeness that can be reached at any moment.

The miracle Aliya showed in fact stems from his having shown that the ideal is right under our hands and is something possible to reach. With a perfect example of a life, Aliya gave the lesson that the path to the summits of quality a human being can rise to begins or passes from the most real, the most flesh-and-bone, the most material level of this world."

Rest in light, Aliya.