Turkish intelligentsia failed to overcome the West’s betrayal

For a long time now, discussions on Islamism have been made based on limited content, and within language sensitivities. As a result of this, concepts that will reach quite different conclusions when the context is fully determined, for example, like “political Islam,” they lose value within everyday polemics. “Language sensitivity,” on the other hand, can bring together substantially different segments on a “scholastic” approach. Everyone knows that both the concept itself and its adjuncts create an opposition. Scholastic was one of the most popular concepts of the last century, and it would serve to bring the addressee to their knees. But this time, different segments are uniting on an approach presented by the concept. 

This adverse approach towards the concept of Islamism applies to other ideologies as well. An adverse approach is taken against all ideologies in general. It is extremely difficult to fully determine the reasons underlying this, but we can say that groups and individuals voluntarily feel trapped within ideologically cliché expressions. We can similarly see a decision was made on a behavior cooperation limited to formal indicators, such as holding up left fists in the air. This applies to ideological groups in the opposition as well. 

We are talking about both an adverse approach toward ideologies, and the problem of ideologies’ inability to renew within themselves. Ideologies and ideological groups entered such a process in the 1990s. It was impossible to overcome intellectually the events that developed after the U.S. and West European countries launched a new occupation and invasion era in the Islamic region. The order that was established with respect to us in the early 1990s, post-World War I, was over. The East and West balance, which emerged with the establishment of the Soviets, left its mark on a whole century, leading to a mindset specific to us. We spent seven decades within this order, and the system which we were accustomed to suddenly collapsed. As a result, so to speak, we were intellectually left out in the cold.  More specifically, the West had betrayed the Turkish intellectual by collapsing the accustomed intellectual order. The Turkish intelligentsia is yet to overcome this betrayal. 

The Turkish intelligentsia had invested everything good and beneficial in the West. This was the general approach. Remembering the concepts of progressivism and reactionism alone is enough. Yet, such opposition was the ideological reflection of 19th-century colonialism. Civilization and non-civilization revived in the 20th century on smaller scales. There was no difference between taking civilization to the East and taking civilization to rural areas. Laying claim to the privilege of reaching the origin of civilization, on the other hand, presented a very advantageous position. They had no issue legitimizing this. When you expose certain “secret information” that Prince Charles is Muslim, you both gain legitimacy to your own position and lay claim to the advantage of being ideologically together with the civilized. The “Middle East quagmire” concept was quite useful in terms of showing the contrast between good and bad, between the beautiful and the ugly. However, every happy period is destined to end. The 1990s are thus quite important. When the West threatened the Islamic region, and more generally, almost the whole world again, it led to the end of the identified world. The world that collapsed was one that the Turkish intelligentsia knew and was used to living in. 

In contrast to the Turkish intelligentsia’s said attitude, it could be said that a new search for identification emerged in the West, particularly after the Ukraine war. There is a common opinion that this war was provoked by the Anglo-Saxons. It was additionally said that this pointed to the return of geopolitics pertaining to the new line aimed to be established between the East and the West in this regard. This was right. However, beyond this, the Ukraine war allowed the chance to reidentify the West concepts, or Western values, in other words, the Western ideology. In brief, they turned this war into an opportunity, and this points to a second period after the 1990s. 

When the West occupied and invaded the Islamic region in the early 1990s, Turkish intelligentsia failed to see the developments, and literally pushed itself away from the historical scene. This is why ideological renewal was impossible. This period cannot be understood within anti-secular opposition as well. It is an answer to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s question of where the opposite of the “conservative revolutionism” concept needs to be sought.