A claim of nationalism on the ground of imitating the West

We said that it is often overlooked that Turkey's process of becoming a nation took place together with an exaggerated movement of "Westernization." Although in the history on which some people in Turkey who call themselves nationalists, ulusalcı, rely, the "liberation" is seen as "liberation" from the British-French, Italian and Greek occupation, the question of why, in the next phase of this liberation, an ideology that made one want to resemble the very enemy that had been fought was adopted, and why a political program was implemented in line with this ideology, is generally not asked.

The lifestyles, ideologies and mental worlds of the Western countries that occupied Turkey and that we fought were marked as the level of civilization we wanted to reach. Perhaps the crude sociological prejudices of that period about the existence of a direct causal relationship between mentality or religion and material development and civilization had a role in this. After all, Max Weber's famous book on the relationship between the "Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" was in circulation as the most popular expression of such a prejudice. Earlier, Muslims had fallen behind because of their religion; perhaps, if they gave up their religion, they could progress.

This approach was, of course, the crudest, most superficial, self-orientalist and least serious proposition of a debate. Against it there were heaps of historical-objective data showing that the West had not progressed at all through the influence of Christianity-Protestantism or any other ideological current, indeed that it had progressed in spite of them. But with the material superiority gained by one side of this debate, this thesis too was accepted as true by default. Even those who had earlier said "let us take the West's science and learning and technology, and let the culture be left to them" were deprived of the means by which they could carry out this proposal. The West's culture, ideology and every kind of lifestyle were imported by the hand of politics, and moreover long before its science and its technology.

It is well known how painful this import of culture and identity was. Beyond being painful, culture was substituted in a way that, in a free environment, could have been made much more of a subject of humor. As we said earlier with reference to Salman Sayyid, "Turkey struggled in a very exaggerated, harsh and emphatic way against its Eastern origins, symbols, cultural institutions and habits in order to resemble the West." The excessive emphasis on Easternness in this struggle paradoxically made it even more Easternized. It did not remain at the level of dress, alphabet and reducing religious appearances; a new history, a new language, even a new geography was attempted to be developed, and even Turkish Music was banned in the name of Westernization and, through the People's Houses, Western music was attempted to be made to be embraced in its place.

The West, that is, the people we fought, that is, the West that the Turkish nation, since Central Asia, had struggled against with the confidence of a mare's head, with a claim, bearing a message, striking from Anatolia into their midst, was now a role model to be imitated. And the fact that this imitation was carried out together with a claim of nationalism is the most ironic side of the matter: What claim, what difference, what intrinsic virtue had been left for nationalism to be made out of?

You hung the past, that is, everything of your own, on the cultural cloakroom of Western imperialism, and entered its masked ball. What will you represent there, and what will you struggle for against them? By imitating your enemies, what kind of civilization will you build, what kind of value will you produce, what will you gain for humanity? You cannot be better than what you imitate anyway, can you? By entering the path of imitation, you have also been thoroughly cut off from your own essence. You resemble nothing anymore; get well soon.

We have made what the Westerners who defeated us in the First World War actually wanted from us the basis of our own nationalism: anti-Arabism. Why? Did we fight the Arabs, that the other of nationalism should be the Arabs? What interest could the Turks have had in the Arabs being constructed as the "other" of Turkish nationalist discourse? At the very stage when oil was found in the Arab world, when all the Western countries were eager to build relations with the Arab world and did build substantial relations, whose work could it have been to put these insurmountable obstacles, these impassable borders, between Turks and Arabs? Whom could it have served? Of course they put them there who benefited, but the bad part is that we embraced it so eagerly. That is, we raised with our own hands the walls that would restrict us.

The belittling discourse directed at the Arab world within the cultural framework adopted in Turkey is really very strange. Among those who cut us off from the Arab world and the Arab world from us there is no such belittling. Because they know very well where they are setting up their stall. Despite all their orientalism, they have not resorted, as we have, to a discourse that would frighten the Arabs and distance them from themselves.

Even today, it is impossible not to be astonished at the orientalist discourses that come on top of all the rapprochements between Turkey and the Arab world. They are so crude and so ignorant that it is impossible to reconcile them even with the most superficial feeling of nationalism. These are things that no mind that looks after Turkey's interest and benefit could do. Then only one possibility remains: These discourses, these campaigns are sabotage against the development of relations. Look for the real treason here.

Meanwhile, sad news for the ignorant who belittle the Arab world not because of its treason but because of its ignorance, in terms of science, civilization and philosophy: Oxford University recently published the list of the oldest universities in the world. Of the 10 universities, the first 3 were founded by Muslim Arabs: 1- Zaytuna University in Tunisia (737), 2- Al-Qarawiyyin University in Morocco (859) and 3- Al-Azhar University in Egypt (972). That is, even the University of Bologna in Italy, which is considered, by a widespread error, the oldest university in the world, was founded (in 1088) 116 years after the last of these and 356 years after the first.

Of course, this racist language, expressed with more than excessive shamelessness and insolence toward Arabs, is not aware that it reveals its own ignorance the more it regards Arabs as nothing but Bedouins. If they read a little of Prof. Fuat Sezgin and learned what on earth the history of Islamic science and technology taught the West, I wonder whether they could get out of this racist vise?

We do not think so, because racism is not an ignorance that is removed by a lack of knowledge being remedied; it is a feeling that stems, in essence, from jahiliyya.