"The rightward shift of Islamist intellectuals", you said?

I was in Afghanistan, trying to unravel the secret of a people, of a social-political movement, that after 45 years of occupation and civil wars forced the latest world power, the United States, to withdraw with its most primitive weapons and irregular attacks.

The secret, in fact, has these days ceased to be a secret for those who know, as it is being repeated in Gaza too. After witnessing everything that has happened, the secret reveals itself: actually there is no secret. Everything takes place within the limits of human capacity.

Someone is saying on social media:

"I was listening to the life stories of the Companions of the Prophet, which seem so far outside the world and above reality that they appear to have nothing to say to us today. And the efforts of historicists, or those enthusiasts of so-called real history, who try to break the spell of these lives with the worst accounts of them had almost led me to lose my belief in these people's faith, their heroism, their purity. The scenes of faith, patience, perseverance and jihad that we see in Gaza have restored both my view of history and my view of the Companions. I used to think: if these scenes took place yesterday, they take place today as well, what could prevent it? Today, after all the tempting, seductive historicist thoughts that have passed through my mind, I think: if these epic scenes are happening in Gaza today, they must have happened in the past too."

That we can witness today human grandeurs thought to belong to history and to have remained in history, or the opposite. Perhaps the feeling Akif was seized by when he said "The lions of Badr could only have been this glorious" was a similar feeling.

Spot on: feeling. In fact the basic motive determining our view of history, and of many events, is not reason or evidence but our feelings. Our impressions. That is why there is a saying constantly repeated by those among the philosophers of history who have found a path to wisdom: history is rewritten every moment. Because our feelings are constantly changing. Because we carry a heart, and the heart we carry has more influence than our brain over our thinking and over our view of events. Let those who seek pure reason, who consider the realization of this reason in its bare form on earth possible, keep searching, and if they find it, let them tell us too.

While I was looking at our past, at Afghanistan, at Gaza in Kabul in exactly these feelings, the link to an article came my way. An article written by Ruşen Çakır under the title "The Rightward Turn of Islamist Intellectuals." The title is striking; at first glance, with my own prejudices, it was clear where it would fall, and the question it provoked was clear as well: had Islamist intellectuals turned right from leftism, or did they have a position of their own and turned right from there? If that position was their own, is there an eye in these analyses that can follow it from there?

Out of curiosity I enter its content, and it turns out that the "intellectual who turned right" is me (or other Islamist intellectuals along with me). For a long time I have not witnessed any article of Çakır written with pure reason at all. When the subject is Islamists or Islamist intellectuals, I could have understood what he would say about their bankruptcy, death, collapse, rightward turn without reading it, but I read it. After all, as he himself puts it, there are so many years of acquaintance. I know very well that he generally pounces on this kind of story with great appetite and emotion. It is not hard to understand what kind of consolation it gives him to prick up his ears at every voice that criticizes Islamists in some way, points to inconsistencies from within, comes out from within and attacks its own neighborhood. I understand it too, and in my book I am in fact trying to tell the story of these leftist consolations as well.

The only sentence he himself composed directly about me is this: "Prof. Yasin Aktay was one of the prominent social scientists and intellectuals of the Islamist community, and he had a certain dialogue with non-Islamist, especially leftist circles. Later he became an executive and deputy in the AKP, and of course changed many of his views, attitudes, etc." But everything he wrote about me throughout the article he has quoted from my dear brother Esat Arslan, who describes me as "an older brother he loves very much, who even played a part in his intellectual development and still transforms him in a positive direction."

Indeed, Arslan did not neglect to say, right in the title of his article: "This text is not a criticism of my beloved Yasin Abi. It is only, but only, a criticism of one book of Yasin Abi. Since Yasin Abi analyzes the unconscious of the Turkish left in this book, I too was obliged to analyze the unconscious of this book, only, but only, of the book in question."

Of course, I would not have wanted to hear the criticisms that dear Esat, who has apparently filled up enough to make so many criticisms of me, could very well have made to my face, for the first time from Ruşen Çakır, rather than from himself, or from his book, which he could have written and delivered to me personally. This is first of all a matter of right between Esat and me that we have to settle. I am setting it aside.

But the story (history) that Çakır wrote about me in his three-line sentence struck me as very careless and far too emotional. Evidently I have disappointed Çakır. By doing what? By "turning right" and "of course changing many of his views and attitudes." How did all this sudden change come about when I was "previously one of the prominent social scientists and intellectuals of the Islamist community"? "By becoming an executive and deputy in the AKP."

What kind of emotional reading of history is this, what kind of reductionist and simplistic tracing of a biography? Frankly, as a typical incident it deserves to be dwelt upon separately. What kind of rupture could he see between my earlier ideas and the political movement I joined later, or why did he hope for such a rupture? After the day I joined the AK Party, I continued, on the contrary, to write, speak and express my views without interruption. I certainly cannot claim that there has been not a millimeter of change among these views. No one can live his life to the end without changing. Every day we are tested by new events, and before every test we are in the desire to take a stance suited to our own will. But in my main line, in my views on many issues, there has been no change, and in the AK Party too I have not held back from waging the struggle for the same views.

Could he make the sentences about this change he has detected in me at the moment I joined the AK Party for any intellectual who joined the CHP, the DEM or any other political party?

Or is the problem only joining the AK Party?

The title of intellectual taken away by hand overnight because of joining the AK Party. Who takes this title away by hand?

Pardon me, but is there such a judicial order of intellectuality operating in our country?

Yet earlier, on the occasion of the debate on Power and Islamism, that is, before I had even joined the AK Party, I had an answer I gave to those who said that Islamism was (strangely) exhausted, finished, dead by coming to power: "Well, well, did Islamism ever promise anyone not to come to power? Which political movement has no desire to come to power? For example, does the leftist movement promise to remain in opposition forever?"

Do take a look, if you will, at the history of the left in Turkey. At its partnership with despotic Kemalism, at the way it still imagines it has the privilege of bestowing intellectuality like a title. Where in these is there opposition, where is there intellectuality?

The talk goes on and on, and our space is narrow. Perhaps we will continue this subject in Tezkire, the still-published intellectual outlet of Islamist thought, which Çakır knows very well.