With respect and affection to Erdal Baykan, who said "There must always be hope"

"A human being is an unfinished text; he is completed when he dies," say some philosophers. In Islam, too, with death the book of deeds is closed, and a person dies as he has lived. Of course, there are also the ongoing deeds that continue after a person's death and keep adding something to his text. His influences, his righteous children, his books, his works, and the friends who remember him well. How their testimonies and good words affect the closed book of deeds, God knows, but it is certain that they continue to write the deceased's text in this world.

When I received in the early hours of the morning, in the WhatsApp group, the news that he had fallen ill because of the illness he had been fighting for a long time and had been taken to intensive care, I immediately asked the All-Healing God for healing. In the meantime I also followed with great interest and sensitivity how the normally very active agenda of the group became a single subject. A few hours later, when I received the news of his passing within the same group, there was nothing left to say but "we all belong to Him and we will all return to Him," but when I looked at what was being written about him in the group in the meantime, I followed with tears in my eyes what kind of friendship Professor Erdal Baykan had been blessed with, and how his text was enriched by this blessing.

For some time we had been together, almost every day, in a WhatsApp group where we were open and ready to hear things from one another, a group that began with Necdet Subaşı's Alevi and Roman workshops and that had lately evolved into an excellent place, functioning with an exceptional performance under his exceptional moderation. An environment of interesting beauty and sincerity had formed, in which everyone could most easily convey a word to everyone. The developments of the day, the chronic problems and subjects of the tradition, and hopes for the future were blended wonderfully, in a perfect golden ratio, and became the subject of conversation. Conversation brings companionship, friendship, sincerity and affection. No one misunderstands anyone; perhaps, of necessity, no one understands rightly either, but only understands, and every word enters the blessing of the conversation and adds its own blessing. This assembly of conversation and affection, which began with the Quarantine Conversations, is lived as an excellent example of how very productive, very beneficial environments can emerge even from within the new means of communication of new times.

Professor Erdal was one of the most active and sincere members of the group, the assembly of friends. My acquaintance with him went back to the early nineties, from his work at Yüzüncü Yıl University to Selçuk University, and from there to his academic and political ventures in Ankara... but it is as if this last assembly were the last stop of our companionship.

From the days I knew him, his stance was always unalloyed, unconditionally on the side of right and truth, together with Muslims; he inspired the trust of a friend with whom one could walk the road together, with his sincerity, his gentlemanliness and his intellectual curiosity. From small political matters to great political issues, from intellectual curiosity to academic subjects, his concern and interest were always Muslim. His sincerity and friendship toward God, toward His Prophet and toward Muslims were the summary of his life. Of course in his own way, with his own interpretation and style. He was from Adana, for instance, and this quality was one of the evident features of both his whole personality and his style. He approached matters, people and subjects in a manly way; without bending too much, without beating around the bush, in the most graceful way and yet in the most straightforward way.

One of the last books he published, for instance, was on Alija Izetbegović's Islamic Declaration (Çizgi Yayınları, Konya, 2016, 2022). He was always in search of a stance with the openness, clarity and lucidity of a manifesto. Aliya's Islamic Declaration was an Islamic manifesto that matched his personality and stance very well. It offered an approach to Islam, without bending or twisting it either toward the moderns or toward the antiquated bigoted traditionalists, based entirely on the Qur'an and the Sunnah, taking the individual's responsibility as its basis, and making reason and critique a sunnah as well. Just like Mehmet Akif Ersoy's Safahat, just like Sayyid Qutb's Milestones.

Despite all the illnesses, hardships and misfortunes he went through, there was a hope clearly not lacking in his personality, and it rested on a principle. In the impressions piece he wrote for Quarantine Conversations (Mahya Yayınları, 2021), telling what he had learned in that period, he said, "First of all, I learned that 'there must always be hope,' even in times and conditions that seem the most negative. I learned and lived that the most beautiful things can be done in the hardest times and conditions," and I think this was not something he learned in the Quarantine Conversations. He had already been living this principle as a part of his personality and only found it once more in this experience, lived it once more and reinforced it. It is this, too, that made him constantly underline the principle of hope, saying: "We had said there must always be hope. This activity, which increased our hope and brought us conversation and affection, taught hundreds of people like me that they could do new things in their work." Baykan had also begun the concluding section of his book on the Islamic Declaration by underlining hope:

"Amid all the disappointments and defeats, the Islamic rebirth is a name for hope and existence. No Muslim who regards Islam not as an accidental event but as the fundamental element of his life rejects this vision. But many people, in dilemmas, will ask this question: Who will realize this vision, and where are they?"

That he ended this section with the last sentences with which Aliya ended the aforementioned book is of course a choice that describes Professor Baykan:

"For us there is only work, struggle and a path for which one is sacrificed. At moments of trial let us always keep two things in mind: Behind us there must always be, and there will be, the pleasure of God and the acceptance of our people."

On this occasion I would like to say that in the optimism, which drew everyone's attention, about the possibility of true friendship in the book I wrote, "On Friendship," my own special testimonies about friends like Erdal Baykan had a separate effect. The presence of friends who took part in his funeral, both in person and with their fine testimonies and prayers of goodness in that WhatsApp group, and who from there went on writing and beautifying Erdal Baykan's text after his passing, also constitutes a sufficient reason for this optimism.

Like Professors Said Şimşek and Mikail Bayram, who lived in Konya but whose horizons, learning and stances went beyond Konya, our friend Erdal Baykan has also joined this year the caravan of those who have moved to the abode of eternity. I ask God's mercy for him, and offer condolences and patience to his family and to all his friends and those who love him. May his abode be the lofty station of Paradise.