PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

Some people in Turkey, unfortunately including some statesmen, areof the opinion "the state can be secular, a person (for instance, a Moslem)cannot be secular". I disagree with this view. A person who accepts secularismis, for me, a secular person. Such a person can also be a believer(Moslem, Christian ete). Thanks to the Turkish Revolution, there aremany secular Moslems in Turkey, Moslems who accept secularism. Naturally,many of them fully perform their religious duties. As enlightenmentspreads, the number of secular Moslems can be expected to inerease.islam is a religion which has spread to many corners of the globe. Itis to be expected that islam, like ali other great religions, should ineludemany branehes or seets. They are ali Moslem, but they have their differences.Otherwise, they would not form separate groups. Respect for othergroups is necessary for peace and brotherhood in islam. Secular islam innow one of these groups and other sects owe respect to Secular islam andvice-versa.5. The Necessity for the Kemalist Revolution: From time to timeone comes aeross certain observers who seem to assume that the KemalistRevolution was a sort of personal program of Atatürk, imposed on an unwillingnation by a victorious leader who had saved it from disaster. Ifthis were the case, the Revolution would not have survived him for long.It would have been soon dismantled and Turkey would have gone back toits old ways. Whereas it is now 60 years since his death and even if theRevolution has been dramatically slowed down since 1950, the edifıce ofthe Revolution is in many ways intact. Thus, we have to come to the conclusionthat the Revolution was an objeetive necessity, not the whim of adictator. Let us now see what that necessity was.The Turks, within the framevvork of the Ottoman Empire, hadachieved the feat of conquering South Eastern Europe up to "the gates ofVienna". With the treaty of Carlovvitz in 1699, began the process of pullingback from Central Europe and the Balkans. It lasted more than 200years, the result of successive military defeats. Since Balkan nationalismpracticed from the very start vvhat has lately been called "ethnic cleansing",this process was very painful for the Turks, for very many of whomthe Balkans were their homeland. Throughout this ordeal, the Turks hadone last consolation: in the last resort they could live with dignity in Anatolia,from where they had come centuries ago. On the eve of World WarI, the Ottoman Empire stili held on to a relatively small piece of territoryin Rumelia, namely, Eastern Thrace, including Edirne.World War I was another disaster for the Ottomans. Hovvever, thepeace treaty that the Empire had to sign at Sevres in 1920 was a traumaticshock of gigantic dimensions for ali Turks. They now realized that just asthey had been pushed out of Rumelia, now they vvere being pushed out of26