Whose border are these sentries guarding?

When we relay our observations about Afghanistan, which are entirely first-hand and based on our meetings with the relevant actors, the reactions displayed from within the net of the news are worth studying in their own right. None of the reactions is based on any information; they are only earlier hearsay, or ideologies fed by prejudices about Afghanistan. Where there is no information, of course, either ideology or psychology steps in. Ideology is not independent of psychology either, but never mind.

We said that one typical reaction is an effort to position the Afghans against Türkiye, against Turkishness. Most recently, on the basis of a news item about the demolition of the monument of the famous Turkish poet Ali Shir Nava'i, the Taliban has been cast in almost the full role of "Turk-hater." The fact that the first source of the news was the British broadcaster BBC already sheds light on half of the matter.

Was not the most useful tactic of the British strategy that brought down the great Ottoman state and squeezed it into Anatolia to sow the seeds of hatred and enmity between the Turks and their own brothers, the other peoples? What more effective way could there have been of making Türkiye smaller? Even today, when the carp who immediately stand in the way of any rapprochement between Turks and Arabs or Kurds do so, are they serving Turkish nationalism or British colonialism? Yet Afghanistan's friendship, affection and closeness toward Türkiye and the Turks, both as a people and in terms of all of its present rulers, cannot even be disputed.

Let us not go into the manifestations of this friendship in Ottoman times just now. We can merely recall that even in the years when Afghanistan was under NATO occupation, in the days when the Taliban was making the soldiers of all NATO member countries rue the day, the Turkish soldier enjoyed a kind of privilege of immunity. Yet Türkiye, too, was there on behalf of NATO, which the Taliban treated as a total occupier. The Taliban, which had coded all the components of NATO as enemies, set the Turkish soldier apart from all of them. Because this was known, many US or other countries' soldiers or officials could walk safely in the streets by wearing a Turkish flag when they went outside the secure zone in Kabul. This conduct of the Taliban toward Türkiye is not conjunctural; it rests on a very deep-rooted history and emotional closeness. Now that it has come to power, why should its attitude toward Türkiye change?

All the state officials we met themselves say they are ready to give priority to political, commercial and every other kind of relation with Türkiye over all other countries. Although all foreign schools in Afghanistan are currently banned, the Turkish Maarif schools are exempt from this ban.

WAS THE MONUMENT OF THE FAMOUS TURKISH POET ALI SHIR NAVA'I DEMOLISHED?

Even so, what does the "news" that the monument of the famous Turkish poet Ali Shir Nava'i was demolished mean? Yes, this is only a "news item," and a BBC one at that. The case before it became news was this: the Taliban has demolished not only Ali Shir Nava'i's statue but many statues. The incident has nothing to do with being against the Turks or against Türkiye. The Taliban's attitude toward statues is clear and has a religious basis and justification: statues in every case lead to idolization. Making a statue even of a respected person turns him into a cult and takes him out of being human, carrying him to a point that necessarily exceeds the Islamic line in veneration. This understanding is in essence a practice of Islam's concept of tawhid that has been applied throughout history. That we find the idea that Islam is against statues so strange today perhaps stems from our having been made too familiar with statues. But in the understanding of Islam to which the Taliban still loyally adheres, the statue is forbidden (haram). Within the same scope, the Taliban has both demolished the statues of Amanullah Khan, one of the strongest Pashtun leaders, who won Afghanistan's independence from the British in 1919, and eliminated all his photographs, and has also demolished the statue of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of the Hazaras. Are we now supposed to call the Taliban an enemy of the Pashtuns or the Hazaras?

The interesting side of the matter is that before this incident was reported by the BBC, the same Taliban administration had already started work on the restoration and adornment of an inscription for Emir Ali Shir Nava'i in place of the statue monument. That is, not only is Ali Shir Nava'i not the target, but the Taliban administration shows this famous Turkish poet the respect due to him, and has already begun making for him an inscription without a statue, befitting a Muslim. The mayor of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the monument stands, has also stated that the new inscription will cost 1.5 million Afghanis (about $25,000) and that with this restoration the memory of Ali Shir Nava'i will be represented in a more beautiful and more meaningful way.

The BBC report, for its part, produced exactly the effect it wanted to arouse among the Turks, and the incident was presented as an attack on the Turks, and our carp here took the bait of the BBC by announcing "Taliban Demolished the Statue of the Great Turkish Poet Ali Shir Nava'i." Of course, are those of ours carp, or are they in fact rushing to serve, looking from exactly where the BBC looks, for the purpose it has set and along the path it has shown? That needs to be looked at separately.

Of course, trying to sow such seeds of hatred between Türkiye and the peoples of its geography of the heart serves neither Türkiye nor the Turks in any way. This point of view has nothing to do with nationalism. We must not forget that this style of nationalism made Türkiye lose a huge Ottoman sphere of influence. The homelands that we lost, that we wrote off in the name of nationalist pride, are being claimed like cannibals by the British, the French, the Americans. The British, the French and the Americans pounced with great appetite on our own homelands that we belittled as "Arab deserts" and abandoned with a strange nationalism such as "we cannot sacrifice a single Mehmetçik," and from that day to this, neither we nor the people in the lands we abandoned have been able to make ends meet. Should not the fact that the same nationalist mindset stands in the way of every attempt today to bring these two shores together make us question on whose behalf they are standing guard?

Today, the effort to cool relations with Afghanistan, which, after gaining its independence through a genuine war of liberation, has shown Türkiye, with its independent will, a friendship and closeness it has shown no one else, is precisely the fulfillment of this guard duty. Neither more nor less.