Identifying Turkey’s Better Angels
The New York Times today published a review (click here) of Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. The book presents evidence that our era is less violent, less cruel, and more peaceful than any previous period of human existence and tries to figure out why. What variables had to change for this to occur? I link to this review here (and the book) because it made me think about those variables in Turkey — what will it take for Turkey to become a less violent, more peaceful society? Some of the important changes are: the consolidation of the power of the state above feudal loyalties (and a state monopoly on the legitimate use of force); the spread of commerce that gives people an incentive to cooperate; a revulsion against violence inflicted on ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals that developed over the past half century.
What caused these beneficial trends? The empowerment of women exerts a pacifying force. The invention of printing helped spread humanitarian ideas and allowed people to put themselves in the position of someone very different from themselves, thereby expanding the sphere of their moral concern. Pinker mentions “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, but I thought of the books about Martin Luther King and Ghandi that made the rounds in translation and apparently were influential in inspiring the nonviolent resistance of the Arab Spring and elsewhere. The spread of reason (as a way of interpreting the world) leads us to a commitment to treating others as we would like them to treat us.
Pinker argues that enhanced powers of reasoning give us the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and frame our ideas in more abstract, universal terms. This in turn leads to better moral commitments, including avoiding violence.
Reason also leads us away from forms of morality more likely to lead to violence, preferring to restrict violence to uses necessary to improve social welfare, rather than savage punishment. The spread of the scientific mode of reasoning and living in a more symbol-rich environment, rather than just improved education, may have played a role in the spread of reason — and the idea that our own interests are similar to — and in a universal sense don’t matter more than — the the interests of others.
There are some interesting parallels to be drawn between Pinker’s ideas and the present state of Turkey. For instance, Pinker provides evidence that homicide rates in the US’s South are higher than in the North.
Pinker argues that at least part of the reason for the regional differences in American homicide rates is that people in the South are less likely to accept the state’s monopoly on force. Instead, a tradition of self-help justice and a “culture of honor” sanctions retaliation when one is insulted or mistreated. Statistics bear this out — the higher homicide rate in the South is due to quarrels that turn lethal, not to more killings during armed robberies — and experiments show that even today Southerners respond more strongly to insults than Northerners.
A Turkish friend of mine once bragged that Turkey has no serial killers. I interpreted that to mean no strangers killing random strangers for no apparent reason. But perhaps the personal character of violence is nothing to crow about. Violence on the basis of honor, a community or family taking justice in their own hands on that basis, leads to “honor” killings and to pogroms against Roma and Kurdish neighbors, among other things. Pinker suggests that this is the sort of violence that must be made unacceptable for a society to move toward peace. The state should become the only legitimate source of the use of force. People should accept this and be able to rely on the state’s impartial, rational and benign use of force. Violence against women, minorities, and so on, should become socially unacceptable.
Of course, this assumes that the state itself can be trusted to use its monopoly over the legitimate use of force in a measured, rational and humane way in order to improve the welfare of society — not to punish opponents or protect special interests. States can be violent perpetrators as well, as we all know. Pinker’s analysis gives us some landmarks, though, for how individuals, societies and states can move toward the better angel of cooperation and peacefulness that, he argues, is as much part of our human nature as a propensity to violence.
Pinker had a talk about this years ago at TED too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
There’s an interesting word in Turkish: ‘Gecimsizlik’.
The more I think about it, the more expressive dimension it reveals.
You see, in ordinary sense of the word, a ‘gecimsiz’ person is someone you can’t easily get on with –too moody, unsympathetic etc.
But, if we go little further back towards the root, ‘gecim’ points to sustenance.
So, ‘gecimsizlik’ represents both (destructive) personal differences; as well as, or more so, problems arising due to there being not enough to live on.
Violence, if my general observations are anything to go by, arise when the two elements coincide: Lack of means to get away is bad enough, but if there’s a deeper sustenance issue it greatly amplifies personal differences; things bottle up and erupt as violence.
Suggested solution?
Increasing prosperity for all definitely helps.
And then, time.
Time to adjust to the new prosperous state.
But, prosperity itself does not seem to be the cure for it all either: Look at the Scandinavians, for example; they seem bored to death –literally..
And.. about our lack of serial killers.. I am not so sure it is something to brag about.
IMO, we have more than enough of on-impulse violence that no one feels the need to premeditate for more of it.
CA, perhaps I should plant that link where SSO was stressing the ‘gecimsizlik’ aspect of what happened in Maras in ’78: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S0nY3qTjyo#t=2m27s
(Jenny if that test you took is anything to go by, this is the guy you would have sent to the parliament (he did get in). Does he sound OK?)
The state should become the only legitimate source of the use of force. People should accept this and be able to rely on the state’s impartial, rational and benign use of force.
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With similar words I brought the above mentioned up this weekend during a session here in Istanbul among writers etc. The main difference between secularism and islam (not islamic states) is that the first only allows their state to use violence while the latter to some degree allows everybody to use violence/violent behavior. In fact, it encourage it through religious differences while using the racism/culture stick.
Most agree
BM,
Thank you for the link.
Now, contrast that with other pages and pages of analysis –such as this: http://www.bianet.org/bianet/siyaset/111379-30-yil-once-maras-katliaminda-neler-olmustu
This is precisely why I don’t trust social scientists much: Their conformance to peer expectation and adherence to popular(ized) jargon results in nice-to-read bu useless analysis.
CA, I disagree. There really is nothing that makes what SSO says ‘true’ by itself. He delivers what he has to say well, and it just so happened that what he said more or less fits what you were getting at. Even if he’s right, verifying that would still take pages and pages of analysis and factual data (in this case we’d also need police and court records). The point of this would be removing the need for trust and replacing it with fact or evidence-based argument. We don’t really trust hard scientists either, what creates whatever ‘trust’ there is is the nature of the work and the (justified) assumption of there being a solid body of knowledge/evidence that backs up whatever it is they say.
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If some physicist came here told us something about, say, cosmology and we didn’t quite understand or believe it, he’d be able to point us to what we need to understand to ‘get’ the conclusion we’re confused about.
Social scientists, as far as I can see, are dealing with far more complex phenomena and it is possible that they don’t quite have the powerful conceptual (and perhaps mathematical/computational) tools they need and thus their methods of transferring knowledge about whatever it is they conclude doesn’t look as solid.
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What do I know, though — I don’t think I ever took a social science course other than a social psych. one (if that counts) that had an easy-to-read book (which I liked) no attendance requirements and no paper-writing. It was a read the book, take the exams, get your B or whatever and you’re done kind of a deal. I know less about that kind of endeavor than my grocer Ismail abi — he has no schooling speak of he but does field work every day.
Speaking of social scientists, there’s a recent interview by Serif Mardin. I’ll link to the first part (go to the ‘yazarin diger yazilari’ menu and click on ‘Şerif Mardin: Gülen’in stratejisini bilmiyoruz’ to get to the second part): http://www.duzceyerelhaber.com/kose-yazi.asp?id=3970&Nese_Duzel-serif_Mardin:_Anadolu%92da_islami_bekleyis_var
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He doesn’t talk about the cloud analogy I saw him use once. AFAIR, it went sth. like [on the Gulen cemaat and people and perhaps social scientists] he sees people go in like planes go into clouds but he’s not yet seen anyone emerge. Perhaps, now that enough people have come out, the analogy doesn’t make sense any more.
Turkey is more prosperous today then it was 20 years ago, Turkish people are not happier though. Turkey is a country of colonies namely of Kemalists, Gulenists, Leftists, ex-communists Liberals, Turkists, Kurdists, Islamists etc. There is one thing common though: hatred of others. How can people who hate each other be happy? A Turkish student studying in an American university once told me even in American universities Turkish students are divided along the religious and ethnic lines: those who worship Gulen, those who worship Ataturk and those who worship Apo… What happiness? OR what if you do not belong to any of those colonies? What if you do not want to?
BM,
I have long given up on things/statements to hold ‘true’ for more than a split moment and/or for an individual.. So, instead of checking whether it is ‘true’, I try to focus on whether it’s ‘plausible’.
And, by that token, the tale SSO tells is a lot more plausible than those that try to fit it into someone’s (albeit long established) ideological/economic theories.
People rarely reveal their underlying motives in police reports and/or court testimonies; they usually do just the opposite. So, other than the fact that people complained about one another or sued each other, claiming all the while they themselves were the innocent parties, I don’t see how much factual data we could gather from those documents.
Oh, but we do. Quite a lot actually. We just do that trusting implicitly and based on large numbers of peers –usually, when available. IOW, it is a chain of trust, but trust all the same.
Yes.. and it does help that we each have our own personal Hubble telescopes to verify those things.. Indeed, only the other day, I woke up with a burning desire to check the quantum effects on sub-femto sized electronic circuits; luckily it didn’t take me longer than a couple hours to set up an experiment on a corner of my basement. Next I’ll be investigating this new ‘faster than the speed of light’ claims..
I can see he mitigating factors and I do sympathize with them. But, none of this alters the fact.
Maybe it’s me; but I never did feel the need to regret the fact I haven’t ever taken a culinary course (or have degree in it). If I am the customer, I am the one deciding whether the stuff a ‘master chef’ has dumped on my plate tastes good.
And then a social scientist walks up to him and tries to extract his side of the story. Trouble is, if this social scientist isn’t intimately familiar with the situation, s/he is likely to put together a completely different puzzle –from how it all happened.
BTW, I did read that Serif Mardin interview/talk and –as always– the whole text could be summed up as:
‘Tis a drop I’ve taken; no more..
The undiminished ocean still crowds the shore..
[Ziya Pasa]
Simple: You set up your own colony and get others worship you.
About the Serif Mardin interview:
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http://www.stargazete.com/yazar/taha-kivanc/bunu-bana-yapmayacaktin-hocam-haber-389054.htm
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Actually, I have always wondered why he is regarded by some as such high profile when what he knows about TR is as recent as a few decades old.
CA, no. This is the crux of the matter:
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Maybe it’s me; but I never did feel the need to regret the fact I haven’t ever taken a culinary course (or have degree in it). If I am the customer, I am the one deciding whether the stuff a ‘master chef’ has dumped on my plate tastes good.
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It is not a matter of being pleased by the taste. Any talented person who knows the crowd they need to please can produce very ‘tasty’ histories or explanations. This is like SSO or another politician using his talents to convince people. That kind of stuff does happen and people’s propensity to believe appealing stories for whatever reason does indeed trip them up. People who allow this to be done them feel good, no doubt, but they feel good believing utterly false things that can often be shown to be false even with the known data/publicly available records. This is different than the potential for Hubble data to be falsified in that people effectively choose to feel good over avoiding belief in falsehoods.
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Perhaps an example where both mechanisms can be seen at work is diet related medical stuff. I understand there are problems in supplement or company funded research where, for example, inconvenient data is simply not reported. That’s a form of lying, and medical researchers try to impose [data and funding] disclosure requirements etc. to minimize it and/or make the warning flags obvious. This is like lying about Hubble data. And then there’s the snake oil marketers who just exploit ordinary people’s weaknesses by telling them appealing stories that can be and often are fallacious by structure even if they occasionally refer to sound data. Those two things differ in character in that the former, at least superficially, resembles solid science in the way the work is structured whereas the other, from the outset, is designed to simply ‘taste good.’
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Your Mardin/Kivanc example is appropriate too. Kivanc seems motivated to discredit Mardin and the route he takes involves pointing out Mardin’s professions of ignorance. Note how it differs from what we sometimes do to people Jenny quotes here. In our case, we too use the demonstrated/known lack of knowledge about the country or even the language but that’s against people who are advertised as respected and who claim they know things when it is obvious they don’t. Mardin is simply telling us what he does know and what information/understanding he lacks[1]. That’s fine and what Kivanc attempts against him is not. Again, note how Kivanc’s skill in exploiting whatever weakness his readers may have will cause them to judge the meal to be tasty when in fact he’s fed them bovine excrement with the right spices.
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What is interesting in that Kivanc piece isn’t that he has discredited Mardin — just like in his attempt against Berlinski with a made up quote, he’s simply shown us what he is rather than what his target is. No, what’s interesting is that he tries hard to discredit him. The question is why?
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We have seen a similar mechanism kick into gear against Binnaz Toprak’s report too. In Toprak’s case my hunch was that if she hadn’t reported people complaining about the way they lose control over the scholarships they feel forced to provide, she wouldn’t have been hit as hard. I remember noting that while she got criticized for many things, her critics left those bits out. This is consistent with Kivanc picking on Mardin’s non-praying grandpa or his reference to a foreign anthropologist, but avoiding the money-web that Mardin seems to have found crucial. Yes, Mardin says he doesn’t know quite a few things, but he does seem to know about some mechanisms too. You wouldn’t know that from Kivanc’s piece.
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Actually, I have always wondered why he is regarded by some as such high profile when what he knows about TR is as recent as a few decades old.
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Not that I could gauge the quality of his work even if I had read it, but I haven’t read what he has produced other than a few papers. What I have seen him say in taped stuff available on the ‘net does not lead me to think that he’s intellectually corrupt or fraudulent — unlike at least one of his detractors. It is possible that he was operating in a somewhat virgin field where the existing researchers failed in simple stuff — that even someone like me could detect — like not lying and not employing blatant fallacies. We do not have an old or strong academic tradition in these fields, so the ability to produce work that complies with a reasonable standard may have been enough for someone to stand out. You know what this country was like better than I do — we were very poor in that kind of human capital.
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[1] This is a big problem that may have a cultural component. When I had trainees or young personnel here, I needed to provide incentives just to get them to say “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.” People are already prone to fool themselves about what they actually know or understand and when honest professions of lack of understanding are penalized the problem gets worse. This is not specific to Turkey, of course but may be more pronounced here (or it may be that I can read people better here). I know professors (in the US) who complain that graduate students tend nod their heads and fake understanding of the presented material when in fact they don’t and sometimes for excellent reasons. I personally have a visceral reaction, especially in the Turkish context, when people act as though they know or understand stuff when it is clear to me that they don’t. In the present context, even if I had a high opinion of him to start with, Kivanc would have fallen a few notches in my view because he’s picking on what may well be honesty about lack of understanding and exploiting it in a way that strengthens the legitimacy of false/fake/fraudulent claims of understanding.
I found the Mardin pieces a bit superficial, too. That may however be chalked up to the limitations of the medium or the interviewer. IDK.
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Another thing to watch out for besides false or fraudulent claims and the like is, imo, irrelevant and immaterial stuff.
“[...] diet related medical stuff. I understand there are problems in supplement or company funded research where, for example, inconvenient data is simply not reported.”
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Funny, it’s just being reported that a study found a whole bunch of diet and vitamin supplements to be raising cancer rates substantially.
Nihat, I agree, my questions about with the interview don’t concern what Mardin says he doesn’t know or whether his grandpa prayed or not but how he backs up the things he says/implies he does does know or understand. He seems to have some recent articles in a book that’s just out: http://www.iletisim.com.tr/kitap/t%C3%BCrkiye-islam-ve-sek%C3%BClarizm-1743.aspx
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I must say, I am getting increasingly annoyed at having to pay publishers to get something I cannot conveniently quote or refer to. Mardin isn’t in this for the money and the work is probably already paid for anyway. Grrr. And how are people like you going to read this book w/o undue effort?
BM,
By ‘taste’, I wasn’t referring to personal opinions about some (surrogate or otherwise) food item; I was talking about the ‘taste’ that is an implicit property of it –the way we can tell if some stuff is food or not (first by its smell, then by its taste). And, if some are flagged as false negatives, it’s OK, we all prefer to err on the side of caution.
Yes, they can. Anyone can. That’s not the issue; the issue is whether you or I buy into them. That’s where ‘plausibility’ of it all matters.
If this is a generalization, it may hold largely true; but I am not at all sure it does in the specific case of what he said in that clip you linked to.
Again, this assertion may hold most times, but I wasn’t talking about ‘people’; I put forward my own opinion –not on behalf of ‘people’ but of me/myself.
And, having heard SSO explain the background, how –do you think– I now feel good about the tragic events that took place in Maras at the time?
IOW, you somehow seem to think it is a better approach to believe something called ‘Kontrgerilla’ can perform miracles on the spur of the moment –as has been claimed all these years, making the ‘Kontrgerilla’ something on par with a deity..
Frankly, never mind the data itself, I am not sure an ordinary person has the means to verify that Hubble does exist –s/he has to take someone’s word for it.
I can see we’re stuck with ‘taste good’.. as if we have some other infallible alternative other than to actually taste it when it comes to decide whether something is detrimental to us –we don’t. At best, if have to, we ingest a cautious amount of it and hope that we wake up the next day feeling pretty much how we did today. The only alternative is, if we’re lucky, finding someone who’s lived the experience –or seen others die of it.
In the case of SSO, he is that someone who’s lived through it; and is being –IMO– honest enough to not take sides. He wasn’t siding with the Alevis or the Sunnis –nor he was placing the whole blame on the Kontrgerilla. He just conveyed what caused that violent chain reaction.
This is my take of it.
What part did you thing he was sugar coating to ‘taste good’?
Yes. But why is that such bad thing?
Do we have to continue hero worshiping the same person(s) all the time?
I am actually glad that someone (in media) stepped forward to size up Prof Mardin too.
Haven’t you just explained why it was a good thing to discredit prof Mardin?
Well.. I am not sure it was Kivanc that served that plate. Prof Mardin not only does not know (which he seems sincere to admit) but also is guilty of not walking away from that interview. [We all know that age old Nasreddin Hoca anecdote, don't we, where Nasreddin's own kid suggests him to walk away from the altar when he doesn't have anything to say.]
There can be many reasons: He probably sensed a threat of some kind. Or, he probably was p*ssed at this guy talking out of his hat.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember the particulars of her case vividly enough to compare.
Well.. frankly, I too did have a WTF! moment when I read that part of the interview.. I thought I was reading clear signs of him going senile when he started talking about his grandpa and what not, to show that he was raised to understand the people his grandpa believed he belonged.
I too would pick those paragraphs if I felt like writing about our dear old Prof Mardin.. to hint that the guy has gone bonkers just like his grandpa was at the time.
This kind of indifference.. how shall I put it.. leaves the field open to PR people.. as it happened with Elif Safak, Orhan Pamuk –as well as countless others– where simply because those who should have opinions about them have not bothered to read/evaluate these guys, leaving a very (paid?) vocal minority to assign them greatest-of-all-time to the rest of us.
And, being honest is all what we look for in a person of letters?
IOW, he didn’t have much to say; but, he went ahead and talked about it all the same.. as if it was a preview of a product that hasn’t even hit the conceptual design yet?
Yeah. Trouble is, technically, he is NOT from this country. He should have stuck with the academic traditions of his current domicile.
Precisely. We just don’t know how to utter the words “I don’t know”; we seem to think it is rude to say that –we think the other party thinks we’re avoiding him/her– so we respond saying any old thing.
It was something that cost me a lot of time when I needed to ask strangers for directions in places I wasn’t familiar with. People just would be so kind as to spend time detailing the directions; except that they’d probably never listened to the question, nor did they know what they we talking about. I’d find out about this when I arrived at some totally irrelevant place. The only solution I could devise, at the time, is to ask several people (hence waste a lot of time), and then try to pick some common denominator –and hope for the best. Luckily, GPS navigation solved most of that now.
Coming back to Prof Mardin, I am really surprised that he chose to act like one of those guys I’d ask directions from.. he shouldn’t have found himself compelled to elaborate on –hinting that he didn’t know isn’t enough; he should have shut up.
CA, I’d usually try to do a point by point but it seems senseless in this case. So I’ll cut it short.
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Haven’t you just explained why it was a good thing to discredit prof Mardin?
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No, because it is not symmetric. As in:
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Person A, claims expertise in, say, Turkish literature and you find out [he doesn't tell you] he cannot read Turkish well (or at all!) and you notice that he just makes stuff up for bits he doesn’t understand with an aura of expertise. We make noises about this if we notice it.
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Person B, also claims some expertise, but he tells you what parts he’s weak on which period he hasn’t looked into and what he needs to figure out. We can still make noises about this, but not the same kind as above.
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B can still fool you or lead you astray, no doubt, but A is almost guaranteed to do so and he’s shown that.
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I too would pick those paragraphs if I felt like writing about our dear old Prof Mardin.. to hint that the guy has gone bonkers just like his grandpa was at the time.
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Why? This is what he says:
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“Kendi memleketini bilmeyen insanlardan oluşan bir aile mi olacağız” diyerek, beni aldı elimden İstanbul’da İstiklal Caddesi’nin ortasındaki Ağa Camii’ne götürdü. Kendisi dışarıda kaldı, “Git” dedi, “bu insanlar ne yapıyorlarsa sen de onu yap. Önce abdest, sonra namaz, onlar ne yapıyorlarsa ben de onu yaptım. Ağa Camii’nden sonra beni Balık Pazarı’na götürdü. Balık Pazarı’nda mumbar yedirdi. Şimdi Türklük, İslam… Mumbar, cami… Bizim birbirine bağlamakta çok zorluk çektiğimiz İslam ve milliyetçiliği, bu fıkra bile iki küçük hareketle birbirine bağlıyor işte. (emphasis mine)
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This is somewhat odd, but that’s the point and he says so. That’s his point. It would have been a better story if the gradpa bought him a few beers at the pasaj and a few hours later Mardin had come back to the same mosque’s yard, somewhat inebriated, paid the few kurus to the loo guy and relieved himself. This way, we’d have a complete picture of imitative worship, interesting food, the sin of drinking coming a full circle and would note how the combination of all that seems normal to us (at least to some of us who grew up in Istanbul) etc. It is bonkers, perhaps, but seems to be as good a way as any to introduce a young man to an aspect of sunni Muslim ‘Turkishness’ as lived in Istanbul at the time. I don’t see why this implies he’s somehow disqualified to do whatever work it is that he does about this country and its people.
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This kind of indifference.. how shall I put it.. leaves the field open to PR people.. as it happened with Elif Safak, Orhan Pamuk –as well as countless others– where simply because those who should have opinions about them have not bothered to read/evaluate these guys, leaving a very (paid?) vocal minority to assign them greatest-of-all-time to the rest of us.
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This is OK, as far as I am concerned. If people are using their [well-deserved or not] fame in some kind of art to exert influence in an unrelated field and peddle nonsense, that nonsense can be [and quite often is] objected to independent of their other work. Do we attempt to put down a soccer player’s skills in his sport because he is vocal about politics and uses his fame to make himself heard? Makes no sense to me.
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Anyway, you seem to want me to put down Mardin as a social scientist when it is clear I lack the knowledge of social science to gauge his work [besides I haven't even read his stuff]. No.
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Coming back to Prof Mardin, I am really surprised that he chose to act like one of those guys I’d ask directions from.. he shouldn’t have found himself compelled to elaborate on –hinting that he didn’t know isn’t enough; he should have shut up.
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Perhaps, except that it isn’t clear anyone knows what he says he doesn’t know. EG: When he points out that ‘sohbet’ needs to be looked into or that it looks interesting, he’s talking about a very specific kind of interaction in a specific context and not simply that we chat with each other about God or in general. We know we’re chatty people as does he, that’s not what he finds interesting and if he did imply ignorance it wasn’t about chattiness in general. That’s what I took him to be saying.
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In perhaps a similar way one can, of course, put Russel and Whitehead down for taking 379 pages[1] to get to the point here they show 1+1=2 in Principia Mathematica, but if you do this to imply that they didn’t know how to add one to one, you’d be wrong and ludicrously so. Their effort was misguided, perhaps, for other very good reasons but ignorance of simple arithmetic was not one of them.
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[1] Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Principia_Mathematica_theorem_54-43.png
BM,
I couldn’t care less if you went out and put him six feet under, nor would I at all be interested if you declared him a deity.
What I do find odd, however, is that you seem to expect me to hold him somehow above criticism just because he is a social scientist.
I am afraid I don’t grant such privileges.
He cannot sit on his laurels (if he really had any); that interview is much closer to a layman’s ‘geyik’ than anything else.
A better question would be, IMO, “just what does he know?”.
He talks around Gulen Cemaat; yet, he admits that he has no data, no idea, about it.
Then he talks about Islamisation being on the rise; and, all he can offer is a pathetic anecdotal example that a few of his friends got curious about ‘tekke’s and apparently –he says– this is something contagious..
Then, he point out that there’s something in ‘sohbet’.. something that brings people closer.. wait for it, that something could be communication..
Wow..
I do wish you hadn’t wasted this perfectly interesting example on defense of SF.. What he is doing is nothing like that.
“What I do find odd, however, is that you seem to expect me to hold him somehow above criticism just because he is a social scientist.”
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This, imo, is quite unfair a description of what Bulent’s been saying. Having said that, I checked out Taha Kivanc’s critique of the SM interview. Imo, it’s a thoroughly fair critique.
CA,
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What I do find odd, however, is that you seem to expect me to hold him somehow above criticism just because he is a social scientist.
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I don’t, I just think your criticism is delivered in bad faith and in a misleading fashion.
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Then, he point out that there’s something in ’sohbet’.. something that brings people closer.. wait for it, that something could be communication..
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Yes, you can discount psychotherapy, brain-washing, interactive teaching, advice-giving, study groups, therapy groups the same way — it is just people talking and communicating. Maybe Mardin is a very shallow and incompetent guy and maybe his stress on sohbet is indeed just ludicrous. I wouldn’t know. The point is that you don’t seem to know either and go further to tell me what does exist in the text we both have read isn’t there. As in:
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Then he talks about Islamisation being on the rise; and, all he can offer is a pathetic anecdotal example that a few of his friends got curious about ‘tekke’s and apparently –he says– this is something contagious.
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I re-checked (I really do appreciate not being able to trust my interlocutor and having to check and recheck everything they say, yes indeed I just love it, thank you, thank you, thank you). He says more than what you said he said. He mentions books, TV programs, mosque attendance, kinds of attitudes that are spreading, webs/networks of money, propaganda etc. and is trying to put part of that in some kind of historical context. Now, once again, he may not have the data or perhaps it is just qualitative characterizations that he’s going by — I don’t know. I do know, who I am not asking about this though.
BM,
Bad faith.. you’re probably right: I don’t deal in faith –that (lack of faith) probably comes across as bad faith. Can’t help that.
Misleading? I have been reading your attempts to unmislead yourself –by digging up paltrily supporting evidences from his interview.
Indeed I do.
By this creative token, we can easily call Twitter, Facebook etc. all ‘tarikat’s then. The fact that we don’t is probably because Prof Mardin hasn’t been aware of them..
You’re lawyering the text –reading it word by word. If, OTOH, you read it as a whole, I am sure you’d be more in-line with what I am saying.
Things you do and don’t know seem somewhat confused, if I may say so.. It might be helpful if you rose above that paralegal habit; there are times it prevents you from seeing the forest.
I am surprised that you don’t see that Prof Mardin isn’t saying anything at all.
He is, at best, taking an apologetic stance especially against the Gulen crowd –after all, there’s no excuse for being successful. I also wonder if he’s received a lucrative offer hence this wiggling to help pave his way out some future criticism..
Anyway, all the historical context or or other stuff you’ve pointed out in the above paragraph can be said about many other aspects of life; yet, we don’t see them forming such large groups.
CA,
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Bad faith.. you’re probably right: I don’t deal in faith –that (lack of faith) probably comes across as bad faith. Can’t help that.
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No it doesn’t ‘come across’ that way, it starts out that way. Have seen it many times before. Yes you can help it, in fact only you can.
BM,
I am, of course, so sorry for I failed to resonate..
BTW, from paralegal to being the judge + jury both at the same time and in one go.. nice going there.
CA,
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It is not resonance that’s the problem. You are sorry about the wrong thing. As for passing judgment, perhaps you should look at what judgments you passed on others on what kind of flimsy and made-up evidence before complaining. As in:
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I too would pick those paragraphs if I felt like writing about our dear old Prof Mardin.. to hint that the guy has gone bonkers just like his grandpa was at the time.
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This, mind you, is on something that the guy himself says is remarkable. But one wouldn’t know it, of course, if one trusted you or TK. Mardin might be useless or insane, I wouldn’t know. I do sometimes know — because I see it — when someone is choosing to be slippery and hypocritical for no apparent reason.
BM,
How is this a valid argument: “Since I thought you passed a wrong judgement about someone else I felt free to do so to/about/on you”?
First: Thank you for considering me an authority, but I never claimed to be one; so, please do make an effort to read my posts as purely my opinions rather than a verdict of some supreme court/being.
Second: Why you would make this a trust issue, I’ll never understand. Do you think I have a personal vendetta with Prof Mardin or something? Or do you expect me to stand in awe for whatever the guy utters –and, whereby, anything less is considered disrespect?
Just as there have been times I thought he did table some original stuff I appreciated, I am –I believe– entitled to show less than enthusiasm when he talks out of his hat. And, that interview is just that –in my opinion.
And, for some reason you have an issue with that –you seem to consider it a bad faith ploy or some such covert operation.
Not my problem; sorry.
CA, it is because I have done you the favor of reading what you write that I say what I say. If you wish it to be otherwise, I can perhaps accommodate that too.
BM,
You don’t really expect me advise you on how you should practice/execute/exercise your freedoms, do you?
Man! Too much meta-discussion around here.
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Is there or is there not an Islamic anticipation in Anatolia? And what would that mean?
Nihat,
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Maybe Mardin’s book has some detail in it. Perhaps like it was the case with ‘neighbourhood pressure,’ he means a somewhat narrow, specific thing (Emre once dug up the original reference here) to be looked into by this ‘Islamic anticipation’ expression. Or it could simply be that Taraf thought it was a good thing to stress because it sounds sensationalistic in a way. If I read the book, perhaps there’ll be an occasion for me to say what’s in it here.
I found where Emre dug up the reference: http://kamilpasha.com/?p=1419#comment-3638
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This is probably the kind of writing that’s in the book whose description I linked to.
My opinion: The answer depends on what you mean by ‘Islamic’.
If you mean, “are they studying and adjusting their lives to Islam as told by Kuran and practised by the Prophet?”, then the answer is a resounding NO. On the reding/studying front, they’d rather spend days and days on the texts written by Said-i Kurdi or Fethullah Gulen than to spend a second on the Kuran. This is the most interesting aspect of them to me (i.e. ignore Kuran in favor of some less-than-highschooled-guy’s-mumblings.)
Still.. they call themselves ‘muslim’s probably to identify with one another as a socioeconomic group out to grab and share any new opportunities that might come by.
They are most focused on education –which is admirable–, yet they don’t seem to be able to foster an environment sufficiently conducive to free/liberal thinking. OTOH, I couldn’t claim any significant indoctrination one way or another either.
My opinion: Nothing much (much detrimental, I mean). In time, the common purpose (and interest) will fade –together with increasing in-community competition– and they will disperse just like any such community.