By: Zia Ahmad
Being of Indian Muslim origin, I am very much familiar with Turkish heritage, culture and
language. Many modern Turks are not aware of the fact that the Indian Muslim rule that spanned for almost
1,000 years, was largely led by Turkish rulers. This rule ended with almost 350 years of Mughal rulers who were also of Turkish descent.
My mother tongue, Urdu, is froma Turkish word meaning army. Urdu developed with the confluence of
Muslim Arabs, Turks, Persians and native Indians, and is a mixed language consisting of almost a quarter each of
Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Sanskrit.
During the Muslim rule, the main court and administrative language in India was Persian. The Ulama scholars
used Arabic, but the rulers spoke, read, and wrote in Turkish within their royal surroundings.
Indian Muslims, although notpart of the Ottoman Empire, respected Ottoman rule and the seat of the
Khalifah, and supported the Ottomans during WWI against the British. After the formal abolition of the Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during the early 1920’s, Indian Muslims founded the Khilafah movement. This was to restore the Caliphate and was also supported by Mahatma Gandhi.
Although not happy with the radical Westernization of modern Turkey, Indian Muslims still admired Turkish people and their culture. Turkey was the only Muslim country that was never colonized and maintained its pride and self-respect. This contrasted with other national states within the Arab world.
I arrived in Australia almost half a century ago, towards the end of 1971. As a young man, along with my father,
I had to engage with the two main Muslim communities in Sydney at the time. These two communities were the
Lebanese and Turkish ethnic groups. I dealt with these two groups to organize Muslims, especially in and around
Sydney.
I found the young Turks to be very nationalistic, to some extent anti-Arab and largely conservative. Within this
group, was a small cohort of elites who were highly Westernized. During the seventies, we had a few sessions with Milli Gorus members. We somehow identified with them as they were ideologically inspired by Said Nursi.
We supported the Turkish community in the establishment of Erskineville Mosque, where the first formal five
daily prayers and Jumah prayers were established.
Later, we also helped the Turkish community with the establishment of our local Bonnyrigg Mosque, and we used this mosque for our own Islamic activities.
It was only after 2000 that my imagination caught up with the Turkish community again. I saw a new breed of
young Turks, either born or raised here.
They were at the forefront of establishing face to face and eye to eye contact
with the mainstream community and engaged the diverse Australian community in their programs and innovative institutions.
This was a new trend as opposed to other sections of the Muslim community that were largely insular – engaged
within their own ethnic community and their suburban mosques.
I was curious as to where this new energy among the young Turks in Australia came from. I later found out
that they were inspired by Fethullah Gülen’s global educational movement. They used his extraordinarily success
ful methodology of engagement with mainstream civil society irrespective of religious, ethnic, and ideological
affiliations. I attended a highly productive study tour of Turkey together with my wife, daughter, and niece, which was organized by this group of Turks. We visited several cities including Gallipoli, where we attended the Anzac Day dawn service in April 2012 and engaged with diverse groups of Turkish civic society
movement members. This included academics, religious scholars, health professionals, educationists, and journalists, and this completely transformed my view of Turkey.
I found that post- Kemalist Turkey had shed its indifference with Islam and there had been a rapid Islamization of the Turkish society during the last two decades. I had the impression that the Kemalist forces were on the run and Turkey was again ready to take on the leadership of the Muslim world. This entailed a return to Islamic roots and establishing a modern, Islamic civil society.
However, my dreams and hopes were soon dashed when I realized that the Islamophilic forces that were
transforming Turkey from Erbakan to Erdogan had major issues. The Islamic grassroot movements inspired by Said Nursi and with Milli Gorus and the Gülen movement were having splits
from within.
Then came the July 15, 2016 coup attempt against the Turkish government in general and against President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This was carried out by a faction of the Turkish Armed Forces. These forces had a track record of conducting coups from time to time against elected governments in Turkey.
The coup attempt failed miserably with minimum loss of life and damage to Turkish institutions. However,
it brought disastrous impacts on the Turkish society afterwards, leading to gross human rights violations on a
mega scale.
The government blamed the Gülen movement, which was earlier designated as a terrorist organization by the
Republic of Turkey. Communist style purges, unexpected in a democratic Muslim country,
resulted in immediate mass arrests following the coup. This accompanied nearly 100,000 arrested, including 4,463 judges and over 300 journalists. So far more than 500,000 people have been investigated and over
150,000 dismissed from their jobs based on reports of their connections to Gülen. Over 3,000 educational institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary institutions) that had any association with the Gülen movement, were shut down while over 6,000 academics lost
their jobs.
All educational, health, aid, media organizations and institutions were either closed or taken over by the
government. This was especially true of any group with formal or informal association with the Gülen movement.
This also included those in many other countries under pressure by the Turkish government.
Just recently, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) abducted a Turkish-Kyrgyz educator Orhan
İnandı, who went missing in Bishkek on the night of May 31, due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) had previously called on Kyrgyz authorities to investigate the disappearance of
İnandı, who is a dual Turkish-Kyrgyz citizen. According to HRW, allowing İnandı’s rendition to Turkey would violate Kyrgyzstan’s obligations under the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment”.
While on a visit to various cities in USA in 2018 and in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa in 2019, I had firsthand experience of high numbers of victims of oppression by the Erdogan government. This group was made up
of men and women, extraordinarily successful businessmen, academics, educationists, and journalists. All had
been the victim of these purges and fled Turkey to avoid persecution and are now living as refugees and asylum
seekers outside their home country.
As a non-Turk, it makes me feel incredibly sad, where just a decade ago I had a vision of Turkey providing a viable leadership for uniting the fractured Muslim world. Now these hopes have not materialized because of internal division, corruption, and the gross violation of human rights. The TRuth