There has been an endless fascination with Turkey among the middle class Muslims of the subcontinent. The first nationwide movement for freedom, in the second decade of the 20th century in which all major parties took part for the first time jolted the foundation of the mighty British Empire on which the sun never set. Actually the Khilafat Movement was for the restoration of the khilafat in Turkey.
But ironically Turkey was moving away from khilafat to being a republic. Turkey was also the first and probably the only Muslim country to have been more successful in changing its lifestyle from being purely an oriental one to that of the west. The other two examples of Iran and Afghanistan failed miserably in comparison and did not survive the dynasty or the monarch who had initiated and then enforced them.
The example of Amanullah Khan is probably more poignant for he wanted his country to be modernised and this snowballed into a backlash where all the conservative forces got together and eventually made him to abdicate and subsequently rolled back the reform initiative. The Afghan society is still in the throes of the same dilemma to a large extent and still the forces of modernity and conservatism are at loggerheads with each other.
Pakistan as indeed the British before them had sided with the more conservative faction of the society as during the Soviet invasion the conservative forces were helped by the US with the mujahideen glamorised beyond recognition. The cases of Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran were different than the Constituent Republics under the Soviet Union in the sense that they were Muslim majority areas ruled by the Muslims but greater changes were also taking place in the former khanates. There it was perceived to be a conspiracy by the foreigners or non Muslims to hit at the very heart of the traditions that had conditioned their conduct on day to day bases.
There has been some disconnect in the reality on ground and the outpouring of emotions with the latter getting more marks in the equation than the former. Relationships even between countries are either based on facts that generate an emotional bonding or it is the emotional drive that marshals the facts. As a nation we prefer the second option as against the first. The Muslims of South Asia have always looked beyond their borders for help because, as rightly pointed out by the author Naeem Qureshi, they were haunted by the minority syndrome and even in the sixty odd years of being an independent country, the driving motivation behind state and foreign policy has been fuelled by the deep feeling of insecurity which often has made them to exaggerate a danger and see ghosts where none exist.
The book discusses the connection that exists between the people of Turkey and the people of South Asia and this has been emphasised by the shifting of loyalties from the khilafat to the republican idea. Though the great majority of the Muslims were in favour of the restoration or preservation of the khilafat, once that ceased to happen in Turkey as it was claimed a republic, the bond between the two has stayed.
The reform movement has been seen with curiosity by the people here. Jinnah too did not disapprove of the changes taking place there and took inspiration from them and Iqbal, an admirer, was emboldened by this idea of ijtehad after studying the Turkish model closely.
During the Kemalist era, though Islam took a back seat, the real objective of nationalists was to subordinate religion to the authority of the state by separating the two rather than by displacing them. The driving force was not atheism but western concepts. Kemalist secularists in Turkey had consciously excluded religion from the public domain until the Erdogan government decided to follow a policy of passive secularism -- by tolerating religion in the functioning of the state.
The recent troubles in Turkey reflect broader issues, the jagged divisions of identity, religion, social class and politics. One subject on whom the secularists and the pro Islamic majority seem to converge is to enter the European Union. The Europeans dismiss Turkey as too Islamic and eastern to qualify as a member of the club and are not willing to accept them as Europeans. The alternative suggestion of a privileged partnership is unacceptable to Turkey.
According to the author, the common factor for present day radicalism in the Muslim societies is found in the extraordinary activism against Islam; with its roots embedded in history, sense of economic deprivation, socio political pressures and injustices under undemocratic or quasi democratic dispensations in their own societies. But there may be essential difference between the Turks and us. The Turks do not wear their religion on their sleeves nor propagate it from rooftop. They know that the union of the Muslim states is only an illusion as several Muslim states are at daggers drawn with each other.
Looking through the fuzz of all the ideological rhetoric, it is clear that the Turks are a pragmatic lot and have yielded to changes better than other Muslim countries. Probably the relative ease with which they have gone on without making a song and dance appeared to be deceptive for societies like us which are already sold on to what the Turks do and what we perceive they have achieved. They have also been helped by their geographical location and the part European par Asian mix of their culture and ethnicities. The cosmopolitan nature of their previous empires too had created its ambience of tolerance and acceptance rather than reaction and disdain.
There may be more hope of learning from a non-Arab example than by an Arab example that brings with it the additional baggage of emotional mishmash that is more difficult to unravel than what non-Arabs like the Turks bring with them. It may create more dispassion and distance from the heavy messianic burden that we seem to be carrying in rescuing mankind from evil and darkness with the torch of religion.