Two big news stories from last week are worth considering after the heat has subsided.
One of these attacks began in Kayseri, one of Turkey’s conservative strongholds, after provocative news spread there about common crimes against Syrians, who make up just 5 percent of the population.
As for attacks, they are probably not fully understood.
107 Syrian-owned shops were stoned, vandalized, set on fire and some were looted.
Dozens of cars belonging to Syrians were destroyed, some with work equipment attached.
The extent of the vandalism was best illustrated at a Quranic school, which was formerly a Syrian-run grocery store, where books were smashed and thrown to the ground.
“This is the Quran course, it belongs to the Turks,” the caretaker of the apartment above wrote on a tarp stretched over the destroyed building to stop looters returning.
The police chief tried to calm the mob by saying that the girl who was being harassed was “not Turkish.”
And unfortunately, this information quieted the crowd.
It’s been a long time since we got over the Ansar-Muhajir Brotherhood, but even the fact that Syrians are at least Muslim means nothing to the aggressive masses who, upon receiving information that the girl they harassed is Syrian, return home and even attack her, as if they could only stop it with a poster that says that it is a place where the Quran is read and that the Quran course is for Turks.
The second incident, of course, was the exaggerated, enthusiastic and prolific grey wolf response from the conservative base to Merih Demiral’s grey wolf during the match and the penalty he received. The grey wolf signs, made with the confidence of someone who had been doing it for millennia, and the passionate speeches about how grey wolves are part of our national identity, if understandably angry about the punishment, were a striking example of the social and cultural changes wrought by the eight-year alliance between the AK Party and the MHP.
This is not just a traditional reaction against the West, or a knee-jerk reaction to protect the government and its allies at all costs or to resemble its allies, but points to a deeper societal change, which has recently reached the point of the conspiracy attack on Ayse Ateş.
In fact, it is possible to wind the spool a little more.
Traditionally in Turkey, religion and nationalism have always been two intertwined concepts, differing in some ways but sharing major commonalities such as the sacralization of the nation and historical consciousness.
The Turkish-Islamic synthesis, combined with nationalism and conservatism, expresses this common world.
But as left-wing intellectuals have been repeating for years, there was no difference between the two in what ultimately became a form of hate speech.
Islamism became a Jacobin and elite intellectual movement that sought to destroy this union and create a gap.
The secular identity of Grey Wolf ideological nationalism alongside modernization, Kemalism, the army and the state prevented this combination from turning into a unity of destiny for many years.
It is probably no coincidence that Türkes is the spokesman for May 27th.
Especially from the 1980s to the 1990s, Islamism grew stronger and the distance from nationalism widened.
Even the forced RP-MÇP-IDP electoral alliance of 1991 did not last.
Religious people have fallen out of rapprochement with the state due to secular pressures.
This led to growing demands for democracy and the rise of a more liberal conservatism, first politically and then culturally and religiously.
But with the AK Party government liquidating the “shit state” and occupying Ankara, Muslims no longer feel, in Necip Fazl’s famous line, “strange and outcasts in their own homeland.”
The state has made peace with religion, and while police no longer stand by during funeral prayers, commanders line up during daily prayers, police wear headscarves, and the bridge is opened with prayers.
But it was the trauma and disappointment that followed that transformed this change into a social one.
One is global disappointment.
The dream of a vision for the Islamic world experienced great excitement with the Arab Spring.
But in the end, the defeat and destruction caused great disappointment.
In Türkiye, the disappointment hit double blows.
It turned out that the Ummah did not actually love and expect us that much, our imperial dreams were shattered, the Egyptian coup and the fragmentation of the Islamic world in Syria, growing anti-Turkish sentiment in some Arab countries, and the trauma in Turkey combined to leave us, as Syrian refugees, having to coexist from afar with our Muslim brothers who were loved as the Ummah.
The bonds of love with the Ummah weakened, and feelings of loneliness led to a retreat inwards towards oneself, one’s family – one’s nation, one’s Turkishness.
Now Nagorno-Karabakh is under occupation, Gaza is in withdrawal, and Aliyev’s Ghannoushi is absent.
At the same time, dreams of a settlement process that had been launched with great enthusiasm were exploded by trench disasters and acts of urban terrorism, destroying the last and strongest barrier between Turkey’s Islamists, religious and nationalists.
When the obstacles of cultural and political ties with Muslim Kurds, and of any sense of responsibility or embarrassment towards the Kurds, disappeared, it overcame the barriers of Turkism and flowed into the environment like a flood.
And then July 15th arrived.
This horrific coup attempt raised doubts about known truths, general references became less persuasive, references such as “those who bow down and prostrate themselves” were dissolved, morale dropped, and depression accelerated inward turning.
The collapse of the state all around us, plus the fear of the state coming together from the streets, triggered the traditional trauma and worship of the state, that the state would rule us no matter what.
The religious have reconciled with the state, and the tanks, rifles, jet planes, and of course the flag have become the official religious of the state.
No longer were anyone strangers or outcasts in their own country.
People who ten years ago could not even afford to send their children to college, proud that they have been an integral part of this land for millennia, are now struggling with being othered.
With this confidence, many pious people freed themselves from ties to communities and sects that had become dangerous and insecure for them, and, left adrift, established their own religions through patriarchy, nationalism and Ottomanism, while those who were not ready to do more fell under the influence of already existing, powerful, unifying and well-known ideological ideas.
nationalism.
In this upheaval of history, the outstretched hand from the MHP and the alliances that were formed helped nationalism to be seen as a branch to cling to.
This wave accelerated and redirected the secularization that was already occurring alongside urbanization.
Everyone, and researchers agree, is in a state of flux among the Turkish masses, who consider themselves religious and conservative, and who are rapidly becoming more secular and secular.
When we think of secularization, the first thought that comes to mind is moving away from religion or becoming a “deist.”
But secularization here means exactly what the Latin word means: “to become secular.”
This trend towards secularisation or secularisation has been progressing at a natural and evolutionary slow pace over the past two decades alongside urbanisation, wealth and access to educational opportunities, but it has gained significant momentum, especially with the compounding effects of the July 15th coup attempt.
Turkey’s religious are now becoming nationalists, nationalists and secularists.
This is secularization because references to Islam are replaced with local and national, that is, global, references that add Islamic sources.
Nationalism is a very suitable intermediate transition zone for taking a step towards secularization.
You are becoming secular, but unlike traditional Turkish modernization, this does not happen by becoming more Western and losing your true self – in other words, by “becoming infidels” as they say.
It is experienced unnoticed, unobtrusive, unnoticeable, smoothly transitioning, remaining within the culture and even the religion.
Nationalism and Turkism, which provide the magic formula for harmonizing life with the state, not restricting anyone with moral standards, allowing secular life, but at the same time not making anyone an infidel, keeping them within the bounds of religion and nationality.
It serves as a wonderful thought form for people who have no problem with the state, who have no reason to make sacrifices other than to vote, who have worldly blessings, who want to protect and increase what they have, and who want to enjoy the world.
Applying is also very easy.
Keeping your index finger in place, add your pinky finger and connect it with the other finger in front.
The index finger represents both martyrdom and the grey wolf’s ears.
