The Liberal Arrogance

During the apolitical revolution process, the so-called Arab spring, whether it"s a politician or an academic, the arguments of any intellectual talking with big words regarding politics is simply related to Islam"s political and social offers. However, these words have nothing to do with how the Muslim viewpoint in a Muslim society will take a role in the new process. Rather, they have to do with the concern over how Islam or the Muslim viewpoint had to be effaced through the accusation of political Islam or Islamism. This western-centric political and society perception is not a new strategy for the western hegemonic powers or their collaborators.

In the Arab spring, the key concept of the discussion with the focus on Islam and Politics was secularism. While it was argued as one of the most inevitable values of liberalism, answers were sought to questions such as "what is the standpoint of Islam with regards to it?" and "what do Islamists want?" Even though a reply was seemingly inquired, the reality is that the judgment of a likely Islamic demand was given from a liberal perspective, including its conviction and the loss of legitimacy that was always the basic motive before the process ended.

In this process, there were two notable strategies: the first is the given impression that Muslim Arabs demanded a political order respecting the religious values and meeting the need of their basic demands. The second is the objective to convict Muslim societies through the liberal perspective for their political demands based on Islam.

Global powers promoting apolitical revolutions were targeting to establish a geographical location in which they could integrate Islam with global capitalism; thus transforming the "menace" geographical location into a client. They are still insisting on this goal.

In this process, what was to be established was a Muslim-consumption society as integrated into the global capitalism where the circulating hot topics in terms of economics, like the usage of interest, were removed from the list.

It was liberals who laid down its political foundation. The historical and theoretical tripartite of the process was respectively modernism, capitalism and secularism that has been debated intellectually as the stage of a structure construction. It"s helpful to know that in the U.S., besides serious works and published books, there were projects prepared during the1980s regarding Islam and liberalism discussions on a theoretical framework.

Given the new, notable fact that the Middle East is the last social-cultural structure which resisted modernization, or in other words which has not become modernized, the historical and psychological aspects of why dominant, arrogant and theoretical discussions were so welcomed in the Arabic spring can be better understood.

Indeed, the secular modern design has not been cancelled, which targets transforming and integrating the Islamic world into a client for global capitalism by removing the opportunity for it to be an alternative. It"s quite likely that what happened practically was a reset to the default factory settings, while this geographical location won"t be able to save itself from this violence circulation for long.

The intellectual milieu who finds the courage to judge the Islamic political and social view with the liberal values considering modernity as an absolute data also applies in Turkey. Moreover, the Kemalist authority, that lost its influence and social privilege in the state authority, seems to have abandoned its throne of arrogance in the new term to the liberal intellectuals who have the commonplace simplicity of arrogance on a theoretical basis.

Holding the magic keys of justifying themselves, the liberal intellectuals" arrogance has recently turned into a high temper, which manifests in their groundless, meaningless arguments they use for every kind of situation.

This temper explosion stems not from failures, but from the achievements of the government. The reason of this paradox is that liberal, secular intellectuals portraying their major Kemalist character in its nature cannot enjoy their privileged position in the new term.

The political criticism is unsurprisingly based on secularism and liberalism through the defects, mistakes of the Islamic movements in the world or those of Islamism. This applies to Turkey, too. Liberals, who never need to check themselves, find the right in themselves in every situation to reconciliate Islam with liberal values or question how close they are to it.

At the face of the dominant and arrogant mode of its intellectual milieu, every objection is easily stigmatized as being categorized under the title of "radicalism".

The uniqueness of the situation in Turkey is that it derives from both the liberal temper and the nature of its political authority. Turkey"s adaptation into the free market or its integration – as opposed to common knowledge – has not been accomplished by the hands of liberals, rather than conservatives. This process in particular brought in a kind of wealth and power in the sense that leftist liberals don"t execute it through their political power and autonomy. This situation produced the dilemma that their theoretical goals are practically realized by the hands of their political rivals.

As the conservatives gained more self-confidence in not hesitating to deploy this power, this led to the expansion of its efficiency while becoming a state.

The tensions between the two proved that a majority of liberals have turned to their original genes of Kemalism, at least given the impression of their reactions. On the other side, conservatives while filling the blank of the term, are being addressed with the class grudge mixed with a theoretical arrogance.

When arrogance confronts the political authority, a temper explosion arises. This explosion proves the significance of the reasons for the friction, as well as who is right.