[Originally published in The New York Times]
FOR years, foreign policy discussions have focused on the question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy. But this is becoming passé. In Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists, who were long perceived as opponents of the democratic system, are now promoting and joyfully participating in it. Even the ultra-Orthodox Salafis now have deputies sitting in the Egyptian Parliament, thanks to the ballots that they, until very recently, denounced as heresy.
Watch Mustafa Akyol at TED, arguing for “Islamic liberalism.”
[Originally published in Huffington Post]
Today, in most minds, the words “liberalism” and “Islam” can come together only to form an oxymoron. However, this was not the case a century ago. The Islamic world was still much less open and democratic then the West, but most intellectuals and statesmen of that world were self-declared liberals.
[Originally published in Public Discourse]
Predicting history is always a tough, if not risky, business. Hence to a big question such as “How do you think the Middle East will be a decade from now?”, my answer would normally be, “Well, we will see.” And yet I am tempted to agree with Michael Novak’s “not-so-bold prediction” that we will see a much freer and more democratic Muslim Middle East by the year 2020. Let me explain why.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News, with readers’ comments]
It has been argued lately that Turkey is “turning its face to the East.” The country’s traditional “Western orientation,” real or perceived, has claimed to be replaced by a different direction, including the all-scary Middle East. Some blame the incumbent Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and its “covert Islamism” for this shift, whereas others point to tectonic changes in the world’s political economy, to which Turkey is only adopting.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News, with readers’ comments]
The death of bin Laden was comforting news for the billions around the world who saw him as the mastermind of terror. Especially the Americans, some of whom lost their loved ones to the indiscriminate killing of al-Qaeda, were understandably cheerful. But not everybody shared the same feelings and thoughts. News from Pakistan and Afghanistan in fact indicate quite a few people in those countries mourn for the man, which they regarded as a hero who bravely stood up against “the imperialists.”
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News, with readers’ comments]
Yet there was one little catch in this “zero problems” strategy: some of our neighbors, and other countries in the region that we wanted to get closer to, are dictatorships. So, we ran into the risk of making friends with regimes that crack down on their own people.
[Original published in Hurriyet Daily News, with readers' comments]
MECCA – The Kaabah, the holiest shrine of Islam, is a breathtaking place – even through secular eyes. Millions of Muslims flock here every year to venerate this ancient building, which they believe to be the world’s first monotheist temple built by Abraham and his son Ishmael.
The Kaabah is most crowded during the Hajj, with millions of pilgrims, but it is filled with thousands of worshippers at any given moment.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
“What collapsed in Tunisia is the Kemalist model.” So read the headline of Yeni Asya, a Muslim Turkish daily, last Tuesday. And it summed up the doomed fate of the modern Muslim Middle East, and its erratically unfolding future.
What just happened in Tunisia, the smallest of all North African states, is a popular uprising dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution.” The fallen dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the county last week with one-and-a-half tons of gold, had been in power since 1987. Yet the country was no freer before: Ben Ali was just a sequel to Habib Bourguiba, another dictator, who had ruled the country single-handedly since its independence from French colonial rule in 1957. Click to continue »
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Among the hundreds of comments these pages receive everyday, categorically anti-religious comments are quite abundant. Religion, for those commentators, is the source almost all evil in the world.
Faith in God, they say, led to religious wars and inquisitions in the Middle Ages and it leads to terrorism, male-domination or communal bigotry today. Accordingly, unless humanity trashes out all religions – first Islam, but ultimately all of them – we will not be able find peace of mind.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Something terrible happened in Istanbul last Saturday. A newly married couple was shot dead in a car, only 10 days after their wedding. The police arrested the bride’s older brother as the suspect. The man confessed the crime and said that he had to kill his sister and her husband for her treason to the community – for this was a Christian-Muslim marriage the bride’s family strongly opposed.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
BRUSSELS – What brought me to the European capital this time is an international conference organized by the Archons.
Never heard of the Archons before? I, at least, had not heard about them until a few months ago, when they invited me to speak at the “Religious Freedom: Turkey’s Bridge to the European Union” conference, which was held this week right at the European Parliament.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
This week, Turkey’s Education Personnel Labor Union, or Eğitim Bir-Sen, revealed a survey that mapped out the political attitudes in Turkish society. Bookishly titled, “Otherness in Turkey as a Common Identity,” the research focused on how people identified themselves in this society and how they looked at other identities.
[Published in the Foreign Affairs magazine]
In his new book, Reset, Stephen Kinzer argues that the United States should partner with Iran and Turkey to promote democracy and combat extremism in the Middle East. Although it is hard to imagine Iran as a friend of Washington, Turkey is ready to play that role.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
My column neighbor Burak Bekdil had an interesting piece yesterday titled, “Would Mr. Erdoğan kindly care for this Muslim woman?” While Mr. Erdoğan probably needs no introduction, “this woman” was Sakineh Mohammedie Ashtiani, an Iranian citizen who reportedly faced a threat of being executed by stoning. Mr. Bekdil was wondering — rhetorically, I guess — if the Turkish prime minister could use his prestige in Tehran to save the poor lady from such an unfortunate end. Besides that, he was also making tongue-in-cheek references to the Quran to imply how upholding that book can lead Muslims to “barbaric” acts such as stoning.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
I once read a comment by an Israeli author that most people in his country do not want to recall the historic significance of the Horns of Hattin. That place, which is in modern-day Israel, takes its interesting name from the twin peaks that overlook the lower Galilee. But its real fame comes from the 1187 Battle of Hattin, in which the Islamic army led by the legendary Saladin crushed the Crusaders, opening the way to the Muslim re-conquest of Jerusalem.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Ninety-five years ago, on this very day, a dark episode began in the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Around 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested in Istanbul and deported to Anatolia, never to return.
The real catastrophe began a month later. The Union and Progress government, the Young Turk Party that overtook the empire with a military coup in 1913, passed an Expulsion Law, giving itself the authority to deport anyone that is deemed as a threat to national security.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
There are times that I strongly disagree with my colleague Barçın Yinanç, the associate editor of our paper, whose view of Turkey’s self-styled secularism is generally more positive than mine. But I felt quite in tune with her last weekend, when I read some of the fuming comments she received for simply saying something positive about Islam in her latest story. “Welcome to the club,” I then said to her in an email. “This is called Islamophobia.”
[Originally published in Newsweek]
Last month, some-thing unprecedented happened in Turkey: more than 50 high-ranking military officers, including several retired four-star generals, were detained and questioned by prosecutors over an alleged coup plot. Codenamed Sledgehammer, the conspiracy supposedly aimed to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which many Turkish secularists find too Islamic.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
One of the popular themes in our popular culture is that peculiar feeing called love, and the way it sometimes torments people. Love stories with unhappy endings are quite common, and the heartbreaks they cause are quite bitter. No wonder so much music has been devoted to this trouble. “Love hurts,” a famous song warns, “love scars.”
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