Within this study, understandings of nation in Islamic civilization and “modern-secular” Western civilization are compared both with each other and on socio-political structures. These comparisons should be useful to know what is appropriate for Turkey.
Under the influence of the French Revolution, the “nation” became a new socio-political force in Europe. In the studies carried out to define the nation, the ideas of philosophers were used, not sociological observations. There was no consensus on any of the very different definitions produced on unrelated grounds such as race, native language and citizenship. Meanwhile, instead of accepting historical integrations, each state tried to build its own nation by choosing one of the definitions made. Thus, although they were known as “nation-states”, none of the states belonged to a clearly definable nation, and it was not possible for a state to artificially build its own nation. In the meantime, many states were fell apart, while the newly established ones faced the same danger.
On the other hand, the concept of nation in Islamic civilization has existed since the beginning and its meaning is clear. As a term found in the Qur'an, 'nation' refers to a religion and its believers. In the early periods, the common language of the “Nation of Islam” was only Arabic. In the course of time, Persian and Turkish also became common languages in different regions. Thus, the term “Turk” became the name of Muslims of different ethnic origins and different native languages who used Turkish as a common language.
Later, with the modern-secular definitions of the West, the definitions of “Turkish nation” became unclear and controversial in Turkey, and the integrity of the Turkish nation was in danger of being disintegrated.

This article is published in the first issue of ASSAM International Refereed Journal.

It is a fact that the general attitude of the people in Turkey has been in favor of human rights and freedoms, but since the so-called libertarian Committee of Union and Progress, a coup-plotter totalitarian mentality has been influential in the state. The most determined democratic stance of the nation against that mentality was realized under the leadership of Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdoğan.

The most obvious feature of those who support the coup-plotter mentality is summarized in the phrase “It is not about Gezi. Did not you understand?”, which they used during the Gezi Park protests. Let alone those who believe in them, the nation understood that strategy very well. Just as Gezi was a pretext, the method they tried on March 30, 2014, local elections was also a pretext that they could not make it.

In this article, the subject will be discussed with the explanations of the Islamic mystic-philosopher Attar of Nishapur of the twelfth and thirteenth century and the Western philosophers of our time, and some events in the history of democracy. As a result, some basic expectations from the Turkish Armed Forces, National Intelligence Organization, and the public will be expressed.

An ASSAM Member’s Democratic Questioning of Democracy  

Hüseyin DAYI

The last book I read before this Ramadan and the peer-reviewed social sciences journal that will hopefully come out this Ramadan are related to each other. The book belongs to an academician who is a member of ASSAM, and the journal is a direct gift of ASSAM to our knowledge and intellectual life. The author of the book is the editor-in-chief of the journal.

Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried”. That’s right. It is bad because it is a form of government after all. Every system it contains is the “worst” for human beings. Because people do not like being ruled. Especially from an Islamic point of view, it is not something to love to rule because of the responsibility to Allah. For this reason, the first four caliphs were reluctant, but nevertheless, they had to assume the leadership because they were chosen. What makes democracy better than other forms of government is that it can improve its faults and faults by questioning all of the governed. Assistant Professor Doctor Ali Fuat Gökçe also made a democratic inquiry about democracy in his book titled “Siyasal Partilerde Lider ve Yönetim Değişimleri/Leader and Management Changes in Political Parties”.

Every book and article we read teaches us something new, but also allows us to make synthetic-analytical new interpretations of our former knowledge. Gökçe's book is also very useful in terms of both providing valuable new information and new ideas and enabling the reader to generate new ideas.

While reading the book, I remembered another book in the field of political science. In that book by Arend Lijphart, the types of democracy were discussed in terms of legal and sociological variables, with studies on twenty-one countries. ⁽¹⁾ In his book, Gökçe gives examples of the changes in the staffs and management mentality of the political parties, especially the leaders, in terms of the same variables, with the examinations he made from the G-8 countries. The most useful aspect of the book is that it covers Turkey extensively and makes suggestions, not content with historical-sociological analyses. It is also evident that the author, whose devotion to democracy is immediately evident, made a serious effort to show the flaws of our democracy and make up for it.

This feature of Gökçe may seem interesting to many. Because although he is now a political scientist and academician, his previous profession was military service. The fact that he has spent a significant part of his life in a military lifestyle may lead to expectations that he is a complete anti-democrat. However, there are also opinions that the sense of responsibility that military service has made a habit gives the desire to participate in the administration in civilian life, thus conducive to the development of democracy. We can give an example from France. Before giving the opinion I mentioned, I should convey a feature that Gökçe gave and that most of us, including me, do not know:

“No party came to power alone, except the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR), which won the 1968 elections in France… In the five elections held between 1945 and 1958, six political parties came to power… While fourteen political parties came to power in the seventeen general elections held after 1945, eight different political party presidential candidates won the eight presidential elections held after 1965 (p. 60).

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) takes the popular revolutions as an indicator according to the period in which he lived, and attributes the French's ability to change the administration to the fact that a large part of the people were drafted in the wars and gained the ability to lead and manage because a significant part of them gained the rank of non-commissioned officer. Mill counts the French and the Americans among “nations which got used to stand on their own feet”. In contrast to the popular revolution in the French, the virtue they see in the Americans is completely civilian-based and has the ability to form a government easily. ⁽²⁾ The political characteristics of today's Americans, seen in Ali Fuat Gökçe's book, are that there is no official political party leader practice and the right to be elected president is limited twice by the constitution. Even if the president is very successful, this situation does not change (p. 205). With this practice, no doubt, “bossism” is prevented.

Whatever the foundations for democracy in which country the philosopher Mill and others point to it, it is in fact an unplanned consequence of the long struggles of the masses against injustices in every country in which they live. In fact, the masses who rebelled were in favor of granting rights only to themselves, not to other victims, but in the end, everyone had to accept each other's rights for peace. It was the same in the USA and France. The only exception to this situation in the history of the world is the first Islamic State. With its system that we can describe as "Islamic democracy", that state was established with a “social contract” in the real sense, the administrators were elected, and the principle of being egalitarian and fair to everyone. ⁽³⁾ However, that point that we have expressed at every opportunity is not the subject of this article.

While Ali Fuat Gökçe gives examples from developed democracies in his book, he also conveys some very interesting information, such as the age requirement for party membership being fourteen (p. 240). It is certainly commendable that every individual, young or old, can have a say in the administration of the country. I believe that the current age limit of eighteen is adequate.

Gökçe, who also examines the individual by-laws of the parties that are influential in Turkish political life and demonstrates the inadequacies of intra-party democracy, also offers different applications for this field. What I found most original and useful was his proposal about arranging the number of party delegates by province with a new understanding. Gökçe, who regards the disadvantages of determining the delegates attending as local representatives in general congresses in proportion to the number of party members there, proposes that the number of delegates of a party in any region should be determined by taking into account the number of members in that region as well as the number of votes received from that region (p. 246). I would like to add to Gökçe's reasons in which I agree: In this way, the domination of big cities, especially Istanbul, will be prevented in our political life. Because Istanbul, with its very large population, has the highest number of members in almost every party, on the other hand, it can have the lowest vote rate in any party compared to the population of the provinces. In this case, it is not fair for that party to establish dominance over successful provinces with its many delegates in the general assembly, even though it was unsuccessful.

I also wholeheartedly support Gökçe's opposition to male hegemony in politics and his acceptance of women's being active in political life in Turkey. But there is one point where I differ from him within this regard: Among the changes he deems necessary to be made in the party bylaws, he also proposes the equal number of men and women in the delegates, members and party organizations (p. 245). I am against both negative discrimination and positive discrimination. I think that individuals should be evaluated according to their hard work and abilities, not their gender. Let this statement of my opinion be accepted as a democratic and intellectual consultation between Esteemed Instructor Gökçe and me.

I strongly recommend Gökçe's book, which I have named above, to anyone who is interested in political science and strives to generate ideas for the future. Since the book was published in Gaziantep, those who are interested may have difficulty finding it. Therefore, in the bibliography below, I give the full postal address, e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers of the publisher. ⁽⁴⁾

I hope to see books from other members of ASSAM and wish you a Ramadan Kareem.

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1- Ljiphart, Arend; Çağdaş Demokrasiler: Yirmi bir Ülkede Çoğunlukçu ve Oydaşmacı Yönetim Örüntüleri, Translated by Ergun Özbudun ve Ersin Onulduran, Yetkin Yayınları, Ankara, 1996.

2- Mill, John Stuart; Özgürlük Üzerine, Translated by Tuncay Türk, Oda Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008, pp. 155-156.

3- Dayı, Hüseyin; İslam Medeniyetinin Küreselliği, 2. Baskı, Akis Kitap Yayınları, İstanbul, 2012.

4- Gökçe, Ali Fuat; Siyasal Partilerde Lider ve Yönetim Değişimleri, Ada Kitabevi, Atatürk Bulvarı, No: 92/D Başkarakol/Gaziantep, Tel: 0342 231 23 73, Fax: 0342 231 88 63, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Introduction

Liberalism seems to be the best of the human systems today. What makes liberalism preferable within secular systems is that it can change as a result of experience and in line with the demands of “civil society”. But most of the intellectuals in Türkiye unfortunately have a habit of adopting the most extreme ones of every ideology. The most extreme of liberalism is classical liberalism, that is, capitalism, which favors the complete liberalization of the market. One of his most influential contemporary philosophers from the mid-twentieth century to the present is Friedrich von Hayek. Liberals in our country follow him to a large extent. Two writers of the Yeni Yüzyıl newspaper with the title of “professor” are examples of this situation:  

Prof. Dr. Birol Kovancılar, in his article titled “I hate capitalism” on 19 November 2015, stated at this year's business world summit that Ali Koç said, “Capitalism must be eliminated for inequality to disappear. The real problem is capitalism” and he was criticizing Bill Gates’ words “I hate capitalism” that he has been saying since the 2008 World Economic Forum. Prof Dr Atilla Yayla, on the other hand, in his article titled “Capital and the Shroud” on November 20, 2015, criticized President Erdogan's speech at two sessions of the G-20 summit, urging employers to share some of their earnings with the poor by increasing the salaries of their employees. 

In our article titled "The Unchangeable Social Psychology and Management Problem in Iraq and Syria", we covered the "only solution: violence" conditioning of the oppressed in the Middle East, which is caused by the oppression/violence of both local and invading rulers, with the example of Iraq. Our attention was focused on the socio-psychological construction of the Middle East. Not long after in France, we heard about the bloody attack on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine, which caricatured the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). According to the latest concepts of modernity, the perception in the West was as follows: Oppressed “secular freedom of expression” versus cruel “Muslim terrorists”. In the Islamic world, however, there have been few who appreciate the aggressive ones. In other words, on the one hand, saying or making people say the sacred improbable words under the name of freedom of expression; on the other hand, committing or making people commit terrorist activities in the form of massacre in the name of defense of the sacred. This event required the subject of this article to be the new socio-psychological structuring of the West, to complete our previous article.

The harmonious lifestyle of the Armenians, starting from the Great Seljuks, turned into a complete strife as of 1890. After the Ottoman-Russian war of 1877-78, when Russia occupied some cities in the north-east of Anatolia, it started to provoke the Armenians there against the Ottomans. At that time, France was also organizing Catholics. Thereupon, Britain started to propagate Protestantism among the Armenians, and in the meantime, it began to instill separatist feelings. They made an unsuccessful attempt in Van in 1888, and finally succeeded in starting a rebellion in Erzurum in 1890. In the same year, separatist Armenians killed some Armenians they saw as pro-Ottoman in Istanbul [13]. In that situation, which was created by the provocations of France, England and Russia, Armenians were also turned against each other according to the Catholic and Gregorian/Orthodox sects.