What does turkish Islam mean in Turkey?

When Turkey's secularists went to extremes in the republic's early founding years, they implemented a project entitled "Turkish worship" rather than entering into a direct confrontation with religion.

This project was intended to distance the Turkish national identity from the influence of Arab culture by creating a distance between Turks and Arabs, and on the other hand it was believed that texts written in Turkish would have no chance of challenging the already developed sciences of the Qur'an.

They thought - out of ignorance - that following this policy would make those who understand the Qur'an believe that it was based on superstitious, irrational and unscientific stories, so they set out to translate the Qur'an and the Prophetic hadiths into Turkish, all of them confident in the success of their project.

Among the people who accepted this project are Muhammad Akif Ersoy in translating the Qur’an, Muhammed Hamdi Yazer Al-Ilmalily in exegesis of the Qur’an, and Babanzadeh Ahmad Naim in translating and interpreting Sahih al-Bukhari.

There was a profound contradiction between the life that the CHP saw fit for people like Elmaleli and the life they actually lived with the Qur’an that they believed in and tried to explain, and the alternative to trying to overcome this contradiction was to execute people like Atef Al-Sakilibi and others like Mehmet Akif Ersoy to leave the country.

As for those who remained, he had to live the experience of “a stranger in his homeland, an outcast in his own country,” as the poet put it.

But the interesting thing is that all of these names were known to have an Islamic orientation, and it is clear that they were not closely or remotely related to the objectives of this project.

But what they believed in and what prompted them to accept this project contradicts what the secularists were seeking to achieve, who expected this project to distance people from their religion by making everything exclusively in Turkish.

On the contrary, these personalities had a firm belief that the more people understood the Qur’an, they saw the greatness, accuracy, depth and miraculous consistency of Islam.

It was the combination of these two contradictory goals that made the project feasible and feasible.

The task of implementing this project was supposed to be carried out by Ahmed Hamdi Aksiki, also known for his Islamic stance, on behalf of the Minister of Religious Affairs, and Akseki apparently hoped to take advantage of the confluence of these two intentions and turn them into policy.

Turkish national poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy withdrew from the project when he learned that the translation he had agreed to do would be used for purposes different from what he believed in, and he returned the money he had earned.

It was relatively easy for Ersoy to withdraw from this project while in Egypt, but this is not the case for the rest.

Shortly before Elmaleli accepted this duty, he had been sentenced to death in the Independence Court and had become unemployed due to the closure of the school where he was working.

After his acquittal, Elmaleli went into isolation in his home in Istanbul and did not go out again throughout his life, and thus he was able to carry out his work of interpretation in isolation from the system and its practices abroad without knowing his true intention.

There was a profound contradiction between the life that the CHP saw fit for people like Elmaleli and the life they actually lived with the Qur’an that they believed in and tried to explain, and the alternative to trying to overcome this contradiction was to execute people like Atef Al-Sakilibi and others like Mehmet Akif Ersoy to leave the country.

As for those who remained, he had to live the experience of “a stranger in his homeland, an outcast in his own country,” as the poet put it.

There is no doubt that the interpretation on which Elmaleli worked was certainly an exceptional work not only in Turkey but in the entire Islamic world, comparable in value to works such as “In the Shadows of the Qur’an” by Sayyid Qutb, “Tafsir of the Qur’an” by Mawdudi, and “The Liberation and Enlightenment” by the researcher. The Tunisian Taher Ben Achour, unfortunately, was not as widespread as these works because it was not translated into Arabic or any other language and did not reach the rest of the Islamic world, and the language used in writing it is old compared to the language of today.

The interpretation takes a very serious approach and is far from the language of propaganda capable of guiding the masses in the direction desired by the secular parties.

Therefore, this work may have been a disappointment to those who ordered it from the beginning.

It can be seen that Elmaleli's effect "The Religion of Truth is the Language of the Qur'an" was a wonderful answer to the intent behind this task, and fortunately he did not refuse to do it like Akif Ersoy.

The followers of secularism at that time realized that this book did not fit their secular policies, so they stored it immediately after the completion of its printing, and it was not presented, read or taught and remained in the dark until 1950.

The interpretation of the Elmaleli did not include any words that showed his approval of the religious policies in the era of the Republic at the time. Rather, there was in his interpretation of some verses what urged religious cohesion;

The best example of this is what was mentioned in his interpretation of the verse “You do we worship and you do we seek help” from Surat Al-Fatihah, in which he explained that Muslims should be one nation and not stand as individuals before God, and this is, unfortunately, what we do not see today in the situation of Muslims.

The project of turkish worship in the hope that people will depart from it little by little is a plan that has never and will never be successful, and the secularists will be disappointed in it as they were previously disappointed.