Last Updated on Monday, 26 June 2006 16:27 by Erhan Basyurt Friday, 04 February 2005 05:00
Turkey has been paying much attention to the Kirkuk issue recently. Top officials of the state are issuing statements one after the other.
The result, however, is not very bright. Turkey remaining so incapable in its "strategic depth" and the negligence over the years, have really rendered people hopeless.
However, someone challenges all these despairs. He delivers hope in an opposite direction to what has been experienced for so far. He assures and relieves the hearts. He encourages "dedicated spirits" and "the Anatolian man" to pursue lofty aims. One of Turkey's idea architects, Fethullah Gulen, expresses very striking determinations.
Saying,"Turkey is more promising with regards to the future. There is a Turkey reality and it is impossible for others to compete with us in the future," Gulen adds: "Because we are a nation that failed in different ways many times; however, we succeeded in developing different "stand-up" systems, in the name of resurrection, on each occasion. The love of research has emerged and brainstorms now occur in our country. Thus, our current situation indicates not a system of blindness, but of new searches. If Turkey processes the values it has well, it would certainly reach the place it deserves in the international arena."
In spite of the fact many interviews have been conducted with Gulen, Mehmet Gundem succeeded in opening the issues in depth through unique and excellent questions. That is to say, he did not repeat what is already known, yet he succeeded in making Gulen speak on the parts that had remained closed. There is also much information that the interview reveals for those who are interested in foreign policy. Throughout the interview, Gulen makes statements that open up new horizons on issues like the U. S occupation of Iraq, the powerful rise of Shiites and the potential risks, Iraq's future, the Greater Middle East Project (GMEP), the aim of the efforts to revive the Caliphate, Osama bin Laden's errors in using religion as a reference, Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis and the search for inter-religions dialogue.
Encouraging Turkish entrepreneurs and volunteers to serve in every nook and corner of the world -- from Argentina to Thailand, Siberia to Tanzania -- Gulen states he will never stop doing this under any circumstances with the following words:
"If I have the opportunity, even when I am about to be buried, I will say go and open schools, and will never give up trying to make Turkish a world language. I will continue to tell our tradesmen to sprout out of every corner in the world, then become trees, form lobbies and support Turkey, and that it is impossible for a Turkey detached from the world to stand on its feet. If one day, they pass a special law and shut my mouth so that I cannot speak, I will write these with my hands or even with my feet, but I will still make all these known. Turkey's cause is a great cause. I will continue to say that a whole nation should support it, as it was during the National Struggle."
Dwelling sensitively on independence and staying out of the politics of the "movement, Gulen attracts attention on another point with the mission aspect, by looking abroad: "Forcing political and geographical borders should never be an aim. There should never be an intention to covet the territories of other nations."
Gulen ascribes a great mission to universalizing the "movement's" search for inter-religions dialogue. Gulen views the cultural locales, schools and universities opened as "peace islands of the future" and "wave breakers" against the clashes among religions and other dissensions, whose emergence are possible, and are uttered by [Samuel] Huntington.
However, like many "men of action" who say "original" things, Gulen, "expelled from his country by his people," is yet to be understood. Since he cannot be understood, complaints are formally being launched by some "officials" acting upon groundless fears, against even the schools abroad that undertake great missions for Turkey's future, demanding that the host countries shut them down.
And Gulen, because he is not understood despite his illness and old age, is sipping away the "sorrowful state of being far from his homeland," coupled with "homesickness". However, as Gulen indicated in the interview, "This issue cannot be overcome through fighting, because one cannot fight against his nation."
ZAMAN
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