My reply to those who say, ‘It is not enough by itself to say that Turkey is on the verge of all-engulfing internal conflict; you must at the same time point to the way out’ is: ‘Give me a break. We have been tirelessly speaking of the way out for years.’

All right, let us go there one more time.
The solution that will deliver us from internal conflict is a secular state.
This was the case yesterday, is so today and will be tomorrow.
The road to salvation is true secular government of the state, without vacillation along the lines of ‘We also support secularism, but ...’ Without ‘buts’.

It was no arbitrary decision by those who had fought for national independence to give pride of place to secularism among the Republic’s fundamental characteristics. This was due to secularism being an indispensable component in order to secure democracy and peaceful cohabitation in Turkey, situated as it was in a region that constituted an ethnic, religious and sectarian mosaic.
Secularism is the indispensable ingredient of all democracies.
It is thanks to this that Turkey has to a degree at least been able to implement democracy, whether good or bad, steal a march over other Middle Eastern countries and live in social peace.
But, what I am referring to is not secularism in name alone, but true died-in-the-wool secularism.

***
To enable us to understand what a truly secular state is, let us first look at what secularism in name alone is. The state that is secular in name alone, even though it purports to respect all faiths and, provided they are not criminal and nobody is attacked, all life styles, does not act to stem the breach when a faith or life style comes under attack or threat, but hums and haws and fails to prevent or punish those who resort to duress.
Of course, under such circumstances, secularism and democracy remain empty words and social peace first comes under threat and then disappears entirely.
The reluctant concessions of the secularists in name alone and their pronouncements that they are not interfering in anybody’s life style and also oppose such interference lack all value.
In a truly secular state, on the other hand, those in charge immediately stem the breach if any faith or life style comes under any kind of assault, or even when such acts are at the threat stage, and also punish the culprits.

The aim of stemming the breach is to restore sanctity to the space for freedom, while that of exacting punishment for it is to deter those who are inclined to attack faiths or life styles.
As such, secularism ceases to be a principle purely on paper and finds inclusion within life as a space for freedom guaranteed by the state.

***
The reason that things in Turkey have reached such a dangerous state is that the regime has been abruptly deflected from the secular state path.
The cumulative events of recent years have led to the perception of this truth and the acceptance of the inescapability of secularism even in the most unlikely circles.
However, while contemplating this fact, one should not be carried away by excessive optimism.
Even if the necessity for a secular state gains ever wider acceptance with the passage of each day, two serious obstacles stand in the way of the inescapable becoming enshrined in legislation.
One of these is the mentality of those who wield political power.

Even should those who have no innate inclination towards a secular state be forced however unwillingly to move in this direction, a serious obstacle will still remain in place.
This will be the ensuing reaction from the support base of the ruling party that has taken serious steps forward on the anti-secular march. The swearwords levelled at secularism by the head of the Eğitim Bir Sen teachers’ trade union in Nevşehir and headmaster of a religious vocational high school, İskender Çınar, is a concrete example of this phenomenon.

If you add to this the resistance that will be forthcoming from the public security and judicial ranks of the civil service that have for some time been the preserve of anti-secularists, even if those at the top perceive the need for a secular state, you can appreciate how hard it is going to be to achieve this.
Under such circumstances, we will see – indeed, we have actually begun to see - that our rulers, finding themselves stuck between two mosques unable to pray at either, will resort to the expedient of implementing a secular state in name alone.
The snag is that secularism in name alone is not the remedy.

ALİ SİRMEN