Who is whose mufti?

I read Mümtazer Türköne's successive articles on Hayrettin Karaman in Zaman Newspaper with great sorrow and, of course, with a sense of lesson. My sorrow is at witnessing how so much literature, so much political science scholarship and so much accumulated experience, fed from what kind of emotional ground, were fired off like so many bullets for a character assassination.

In the summary of all his articles, Türköne has reduced Hayrettin Karaman to a "mufti of the government" who legitimizes what the government does and issues a fatwa for everything it does.

First of all, let us state that what Türköne writes has no analytical value whatsoever. It is already obvious that he is angry, enraged, that the government, which he had received sure tips from somewhere would be toppled first on December 17, if not then on December 25, and if not then on March 30 come what may, has not been toppled.

For quite some time what he writes has always reflected this anger at having been wrong or misled. But instead of directing his anger at those who misled him, he directs it at those who were subjected to a coup and could not be toppled. Again it is now obvious that Türköne did not predict that the government would be toppled on March 30, but actually took part in a strategy that targeted toppling the government. That is, the master of political science was reporting the news of an action he himself was actually part of. How could you not be saddened by the point our master, the political scientist who devoted his years to the struggle against coups, has reached?

Rising with this anger, the master places at the service of his political comrades with whom he acts all the political science concepts and historical knowledge he has up his sleeve, and on their behalf, or perhaps on behalf of his own anger, plunges headlong at the most esteemed names of the opposite front. He plunges, to be sure, but the person he is talking about is Hayrettin Karaman hoca.

Hayrettin hoca has an exceptional place for the devout people of Turkey. As Ahmet Yaman expressed yesterday on Star Açık Görüş, Hayrettin Karaman is not merely Hayrettin Karaman. He is someone who has never turned an interest in power into an effort to build structures parallel to himself. Nor is he someone who has condescended to any field of power that he needed beyond his learning. Up to now there has been no effort on his part to plant men in the police organization, the intelligence agencies, the TSK or any critical institution of the state on the grounds that they might be needed in the future.

Nevertheless, there is no one who does not know Karaman's general interest in and affection for the Prime Minister. I cannot know how much the Prime Minister listens to and takes into account someone at that level, but if he does, that too shows once again the greatness of the esteemed Prime Minister.

Karaman hoca has also been a columnist at Yeni Şafak for years, setting out his own interpretations and views of what is going on in his own words. Thus he has already opened himself to every kind of criticism. He never shut himself into the mystical untouchable domain of authority afforded by a nickname like "hocaefendi hazretleri." At times I too have criticized him, but he has always answered all criticism at the same level.

As such, Hayrettin Karaman in fact presents a very distinctive model of the scholar, and I have never hesitated to say it: although it is not in my nature to accept without questioning everything anyone says other than God and His Messenger, Karaman hoca is among the scholars whose views on different matters I am most curious about and take into consideration.

Years ago, in the book Political Thought in Modern Turkey: Islamism, whose editorship I undertook at İletişim Yayınları, I had titled the article in which I treated him "Sources of Authenticity of Turkish Islamism." The relationship between Karaman and the Islamist sensibility, or sociality, of Turkey is authentic and genuine to that degree.

By declaring Karaman a government mufti, by insinuating that he has virtually placed religion at the service of the government, Türköne is not making an analysis; he is slandering, insulting, and what he does through his long, satire-filled articles amounts to nothing but a character assassination. That is why what Türköne says about Karaman at this level has no value, but perhaps what Karaman hoca says or will say about Türköne, or his silence, may have some significance.

Without Karaman hoca saying anything, I would like to ask whose fatwa-giving Türköne, who accuses him of government-muftiship, has taken up with this deed. Where does the motivation come from that puts so much political science literature and jargon at the "service" of a person as a weapon against someone, that drives it into such an emotional channel?

In fact, this is a question to which everyone now knows the answer. But how alienated from Turkey must one be to describe the most para-political movement the history of the Republic of Turkey has recorded as Civil Islam and all the other remaining religious communities as official Islam? Frankly, such alienation comes only by order.

Let this criticism go to his column colleague Ali Bulaç too, of course. Did he not also spend all the accumulated learning of his sociology and Islamism on working out this equation? Is this not a sacrifice that is not made without a price? Either you believe so much that your ideological eye makes you unable to see anything else, or you take on an assignment?

If the matter is eyes and seeing, let us try to show it without growing weary: that movement of yours you call civil Islam attempted in Turkey a coup of a kind that so far only the army has dared attempt, indeed far more comprehensive than that, and failed. Like all failed coup attempts, it is now first condemned in the eyes of society, and then, of course, legal prosecution will follow.

That movement of yours you call civil has inserted its men, organized in such a way as to be subject to its own hierarchy, into the TSK, the police, intelligence, the judiciary, all the administrative state institutions, in a manner that no religious community so far, not even the Freemasons, has done. For God's sake, what part of this movement is civil, what part of it is raising a moral generation, an education movement? God forbid, had it succeeded, what had been promised to Türköne, and what to Ali Bulaç? Would a muftiship or political theoreticianship have been enough, I wonder?

If drawing attention at once to the religious dimension of the perpetrators of a failed coup and trying to pass them off today as "civil" is not the payment for those promises, what is it? If that is not the gravest abuse of religion recorded in our history, what is it?