Mustafa Akyol | |
---|---|
Born | Turkey | 20 February 1972
Nationality | Turkish |
Occupation(s) | Writer, journalist |
Website | www |
Mustafa Akyol (born 20 February 1972) is a Turkish writer and journalist. He is the author of Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, long-listed in 2012 for the Lionel Gelber Prize, a literary award for the world's best non-fiction book in English. He became a contributing opinion writer for the International New York Times in 2013. He is mainly famous in the Western world for his arguments that Islam is highly compatible with classical liberalism and Enlightenment values, and that Islamic practice and the governance of Muslim-majority countries should be reformed along those lines similar to what previously happened in Christian-majority Europe.[ citation needed ]
Akyol was born to liberal journalist Taha Akyol and received his early education in Ankara.[ citation needed ] He later graduated from the Istanbul Nişantaşı Anadolu Lisesi and the International Relations Department of Boğaziçi University. He earned his master's degree in the History Department of the same university with a thesis on Turkey's Kurdish question, which he later extended to a popular book titled Kürt Sorununu Yeniden Düşünmek: Yanlış Giden Neydi, Bundan Sonra Nereye? (Rethinking the Kurdish Issue: What Went Wrong, What Next?)
Akyol has written regular columns for Turkish dailies like Hürriyet Daily News . [1] He has criticized both Islamic extremism and Turkish secularism, which he likened to Jacobinism [2] and fundamentalism. [3]
His earlier articles were often friendly to the incumbent Justice and Development Party, [4] [5] although his later writings criticised the party's governance as having "adopted the very authoritarian habits it used to oppose" and thus having "failed as a model of liberal Islamism." [6]
Over the years, he has given seminars in several universities or think-tanks in the United States and the United Kingdom on issues of Islam, politics, and Turkish affairs. He also spoke at TED, giving a lecture on "Faith versus tradition in Islam". [7]
Akyol is also author of the English-language book Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty (W.W. Norton). This, according to the publisher, is "a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and religious, political, economic, and social freedoms." Stephen Schwartz critiques the author's lack of full disclosure regarding his own family's Turkish history and involvement in politics. He also faults the author for not carefully laying out the facts surrounding Turkish democracy and rushing to conclusions about the country's AKP political party that are not fully supported by the evidence. [8] [9]
From 2017 to 2018, he was a senior visiting fellow at Wellesley College, and since 2018 has been senior fellow at the Cato Institute. [10]
Akyol used to be an outspoken promoter of intelligent design [11] and was identified as a former spokesman for Science Research Foundation (Bilim Araştırma Vakfı), an Islamic creationist group, started by Adnan Oktar. [12] Akyol later noted [13] that he had ended all his "cooperation with [Bilim Araştırma Vakfı]... due to some serious disagreements on issues other than intelligent design." He was also affiliated with the Discovery Institute.[ citation needed ] He has testified in the Kansas evolution hearings in favor of introducing intelligent design [14] and arranged a government-sponsored intelligent design conference in Istanbul.[ citation needed ] In 2019, he said he changed his mind, noting that "the theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with the faith." [15]
The Justice and Development Party, abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative, right-wing populist and as espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).
Halil Turgut Özal was a prominent Turkish politician, bureaucrat, engineer and statesman who served as the 8th President of Turkey from 1989 to 1993. He previously served as the 26th Prime Minister of Turkey from 1983 to 1989 as the leader of the Motherland Party. He was the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey in the military government of Bülend Ulusu between 1980 and 1982.
Adnan Oktar, also known as Adnan Hoca or Harun Yahya, is a Turkish Islamic televangelist and cult leader.
The Nationalist Movement Party is a Turkish far-right, ultranationalist political party. The group is often described as neo-fascist, and has been linked to violent paramilitaries and organized crime groups. Its leader is Devlet Bahçeli.
The National Salvation Party was an Islamist political party in Turkey, founded on 11 October 1972 as the successor of the banned National Order Party. The party was formed by a core group of working cadres of the now banned MNP, with Süleyman Arif Emre serving as the registered founding chairman. Given the banning of the MNP by the staunchly secular state, only 19 individuals were ready to form the party. Necmettin Erbakan, who took part in the formation of the party, officially joined the party in May 1973, taking over the reins of the party in October 1973. The party grew more popular and in 1973 elections it gained 11.8% of votes, gaining 48 seats in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. In the 1977 elections, it gained 8.56% of votes and won 24 seats. In 1974 it formed the coalition government with the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP) of Bülent Ecevit. MSP was closed down after the 1980 military coup.
General elections were held in Turkey on 22 July 2007 to elect 550 members to the Grand National Assembly. Originally scheduled for November, the elections were brought forward after parliament failed to elect a new president to replace Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The result was a resounding victory for the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won 46.6% of the vote and 341 seats. The party's leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was consequently re-elected as Prime Minister of Turkey. The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) came second with 20.9% of the vote and took 112 seats. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which had failed to surpass the 10% election threshold in the 2002 election, re-entered parliament with 14.3% of the vote and 71 MPs. The election was fought mostly on Turkey's debate over laïcité that had been perceived to be under threat from the AKP's nomination of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, an Islamist politician, for the Presidency. Developments in Iraq, secular and religious concerns, the intervention of the military in political issues, European Union membership negotiations, the United States and the Muslim world were other main issues.
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Muslim scholar, preacher, and a one-time opinion leader, as de facto leader of the Gülen movement, who as of 2016 had millions of followers. Gülen is designated an influential neo-Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective. that embraces democratic modernity, Gülen was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981, and he was a citizen of Turkey until his denaturalization by the Turkish government in 2017. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior to his being there as a fugitive. Since 1999, Gülen has lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
In Turkey, secularism or laicism was first introduced with the 1928 amendment of the Constitution of 1924, which removed the provision declaring that the "Religion of the State is Islam", and with the later reforms of Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which set the administrative and political requirements to create a modern, democratic, secular state, aligned with Kemalism.
Religion in Turkey consists of various religious beliefs. While it is known that Islam is the most common religion in the country, published data on the proportion of people belonging to this religion are contradictory. The state registering everyone as Muslim by birth misleads the percentage of Muslims in Turkey. There are many people who follow other religions or do not adhere to any religion but are officially classified as 'Muslim' in official records unless they make a contrary claim. According to the state, 99.8% of the population is initially registered as Muslim. As much as 90% of the population follows Sunni Islam. Most Turkish Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. The remaining 0.2% are Christians and adherents of other officially recognised religions like Judaism. The official number of Muslims include people who are irreligious; converted people and anyone who is of a different religion from their Muslim parents, but has not applied for a change of their individual records. These records can be changed or even blanked out on the request of the citizen using a valid electronic signature to sign the electronic application.
The Gülen or Hizmet movement is an Islamist fraternal movement. It is a sub-sect of Sunni Islam based on a Nursian theological perspective as reflected in Gülen's religious discourse (oration). It is referred to by its members as the "service" or "community", in which originated from Turkey around late 1950s and institutionalized in 180 countries in that addition to educational institutions owns media, finance, for-profit health clinics, and affiliated foundations that reached a net worth in the range of $20-to-$50 billion in 2015. Both the movement and its organizations led by the Islamic preacher Hoca Fethullah Gülen, who left Turkey under the cloud of the lawsuits and settled in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania in 1999. The members of the organization who were directly involved at 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt were put in prison and the members who worked for Turkey’s governmental agencies were dismissed. The movement is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Pakistan, Northern Cyprus, and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The Party for Change in Turkey, or TDP, was a Turkish political movement originally started and founded in 2009, transforming into a political party in 2020 under the leadership of Mustafa Sarıgül.
Hüseyin Velioğlu was the leader of the Kurdish Hezbollah, a militant extremist organization in the early 1990s. He was killed in the Beykoz Operation.
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Salih Muslim Muhammad is the co-chairman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main party of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. As the deputy coordinator of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, he has been the most prominent Kurdish representative for much of the Syrian civil war.
Taha Akyol is a Turkish journalist and writer of Abkhazian descent. Akyol worked as a journalist at the Yankı news magazine, and the Tercüman, Meydan and Milliyet dailies. After the 1980s, he distanced himself from Turkish nationalism, turning toward conservative liberalism. While being a true classical liberal, both in political and economic terms, he takes a rightist-conservative approach to culture and foreign policy. Akyol is a member of the Board of Trustees at TOBB University of Economics and Technology. He is a producer at CNN Türk and was a columnist for the Hürriyet daily until its new, Erdogan-allied owners fired him in September 2018.
Irreligion in Turkey refers to the extent of the lack, rejection of, or indifference towards religion in the Republic of Turkey. Based on surveys, Islam is the predominant religion and irreligious people form a minority in Turkey. Precise estimates of the share of Deists, atheists, agnostics, and other unaffiliated people in the population vary, though in the survey averages they make up more percentages than Christians and Jews in the country.
Conservatism in Turkey is a national variant of conservatism throughout Turkey reflected in the agendas of many of the country's political parties, most notably the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), which describes its prevailing ideology as conservative democracy. Elements of Turkish conservatism are also reflected in most parties situated on the political right, including the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). In Turkey, it is often referred to as Türk tipi muhafazakârlık.
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Anti-Erdoğanism is a political movement in opposition to Erdoğanism, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Erdoğanists. Anti-Erdoğanism has a presence in every Turkish political faction, ranging from the far-left to the far-right, as well as from liberals and socialists to conservatives, nationalists, and Islamists.
Even in this newspaper there are several fiercely pro-AKP columnists, including my sparring partner, Mustafa Akyol.
Mustafa Akyol has left no stone unturned in his efforts to convince the readers of the Turkish Daily News of the benefits of the Islamic revival which has taken place since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government came to power over five years ago.
He also has identified himself as a spokesman for the murky Bilim Arastirma Vakfi, a group with an innocuous-sounding name -- it means "Science Research Foundation" -- but a nasty reputation.