Over
the past 15 years, my country, Turkey, has gone through a colossal
political revolution. The traditional secular elite that identifies with
the nation’s modernist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, has been
replaced by religious conservatives who, until recently, were largely
powerless and marginalized. The religious conservatives have by now come
to dominate virtually all institutions of the state, as well as the
media and even much of the business sector. In short, they have become
the new ruling elite.
This
political revolution has had an inadvertent outcome. It has tested the
ostensible virtues of these religious conservatives — and they have
failed. They have failed this test so terribly that it raises the
question of whether religiosity and morality really go hand in hand, as
so many religious people like to claim.
The
religious conservatives have morally failed because they ended up doing
everything that they once condemned as unjust and cruel. For decades,
they criticized the secular elite for nepotism and corruption, for
weaponizing the judiciary and for using the news media to demonize and
intimidate their opponents. Yet after their initial years in power, they
began repeating all of the same behavior they used to condemn, often
even more blatantly than their predecessors.
This
is a familiar story: The religious conservatives have become corrupted
by power. But power corrupts more easily when you have neither
principles nor integrity.
Notably,
some of the more conscientious voices among Turkey’s religious
conservatives criticize this ugly reality. Mustafa Ozturk, a popular
theologian and a newspaper columnist, recently declared
that religious conservatives are failing the moral test miserably. He
wrote: “For the next 40 to 50 years, we Muslims will have no right to
say anything to any human being about faith, morals, rights and law. The
response, ‘We have seen you as well,’ will be a slap in our face.”
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