'Socialism is the Sharia of our era'

According to Mehmet Sırrı Tüzeer, one of his primary school friends who remained by his side throughout his life, he was a “symbol of decency.” Prof. Ali Birinci, one of the former presidents of the Turkish Historical Society, expresses his feelings by saying, “Knowing him and being in his company was the greatest happiness of my life.” I am talking about the academic, writer, and thinker Nurettin Topçu.

According to his friends, Topçu was a very calm, moderate person who did not get carried away by excitement, even in the most heated debates, thanks to his self-assured thoughts. So, did he have no anger? Did he never get angry? Of course he did, but in the words of the former politician Ferruh Bozbeyli, “his anger was pure.” “When he got angry, he would sprinkle a handful of clean water around him.”

Nurettin Topçu was born in Istanbul in 1909. His father was from Erzurum. He began primary school at the Bezmialem Valide Sultan School in Beykoz, Istanbul. With middle school, the neighborhood changed. The place was now Fatih: Büyük Reşit Paşa Middle School. His love for Mehmet Akif Ersoy also dates back to these years. His teacher, Nafiz Bey, awakened the love for Akif that would last throughout Topçu’s life. Afterwards, he went to Istanbul High School and from there to the Sorbonne in France on a scholarship. Thus began his seven-year journey to France.

In France, he first enrolled in the Aix High School. He wrote his first attempts at essays there and sent them to the Sociology Society, of which he was a member. Topçu, who also received a psychology certificate at this high school, went to Strasbourg two years later and studied philosophy at the university. During this time, he also met an important figure: the history of mysticism scholar Louis Massignon. We can think that this meeting lies behind his admiration for Hallaj-ı Mansur. At the stage reached, Topçu, who prepared his doctorate in Strasbourg, went to the Sorbonne and received his doctorate. Thus, he earned the title of being the first Turkish student to receive a doctorate in philosophy at this university. His thesis was published as a book in Paris in 1934. This year was also the year he returned to Turkey. His homeland story would continue from where it left off.

Nurettin Topçu took his first step into the profession as a philosophy teacher at Galatasaray High School. In the following years, he continued this journey at İzmir Atatürk High School, Vefa, Haydarpaşa, and finally Istanbul High School. His marriage took place in the first years he started his duty. However, it did not last long, and after a while, he parted ways with his wife, Fethiye Hanım. The adventure of the Hareket Magazine, which we can describe as a turning point in his life, would begin in 1939. We know that he was exiled to Denizli due to an article published in the magazine and that he met Said Nursi there, and that he followed his cases. And of course, that he harshly criticized Islam as it was practiced in Turkey. We will touch upon those views in a moment, but before moving on to that, let us also mention the organizations in which he generally operated: Turkish Culture Hearth, Turkish Nationalists Association, Nationalists Association, and Turkey Nationalists Association.

One of his close friends, Ercüment Konukman, says the following about him: “This extremely modest person, who practiced almost all the requirements of Islam in his own person, and I would often meet on Fridays for prayer at the Mehmet Pasha Mosque near Little Hagia Sophia, and after the prayer, we would leave together, walk to Istanbul High School, talk, and share our troubles.” Nurettin Topçu was such a religious person in his personal life, and the community he was a part of is a witness to this. Moreover, we know that he was affiliated with a Sufi sheikh, Abdülaziz Bekkine. Therefore, what he said about Islam, religion, and morality as they are practiced in Turkey is particularly important and meaningful.

So, how did Topçu see Islam as it was practiced, and what did he say in the face of the scene he saw?

Let us begin then.

These words are from his book “Islam and Man - Rumi and Sufism”: “The Islamic world, resembling a sick body divided into pieces by various miseries and ambitions, is living through one of its most wretched eras, and in every Islamic country, souls are separated from each other and are attacking one another. A unity of spirit and togetherness cannot be formed around the Kaaba, which is filled with hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. The reason for this is neither political, nor economic, nor essentially scientific or intellectual. The reason for this situation is that morality, which is the foundation of Islam and the essence of the Quran, has been lost.”

As can be seen in the expressions above, Topçu, who clearly emphasizes “morality,” sees the source of the problems here. The Muslim world has generally moved away from morality and the structural suggestions that give religion its soul, and has begun to live religion with a formalist understanding. The only concern of Muslims is rituals, and in this state, they resemble the primitive magicians of antiquity. In the final stage, Topçu says, “Divine morality, which is the miracle of the Quran, has long been buried in the land of Islam.” In this respect, the dominant Islam has merged with the capitalist spirit and entered into an alliance with it. What is being experienced is now a system of oppression. Misery has been introduced as religion, and backwardness and bigotry have become the indispensable elements of this religion. It is also impossible to get rid of this order maintained by the dominant religious figures. Because the structures that rule religion politically and socially are under the mental siege of these men. The issue is to remove that siege and prevent this decay.

And the decay is at its peak. The press, institutions, politicians, in short, a large segment of society is under the influence of this decay. At this point, where will the masses seeking morality turn their faces, and from whom will they expect a solution? For example, he says the following about politics: “This procession of delirium, which combines trade and politics perfectly with unparalleled skills of fraud, and turns the dervish lodge into a factory chimney or a gate of fortune and politics, is in a position to bring the greatest danger to the Islamic religion.”

Topçu is hopeless; we read from The Ethics of Rebellion: “We are asking for help from around us, the group that represents power in front of our eyes is laughing indifferently. We turn to the public, the congregation is drunk, in a state so passed out that they cannot come to their senses. Who should we beg to? Where should we turn?”

In Topçu’s words, most of the prayers performed, especially before elections, are performed for show, and mosques host this show in this respect. As soon as a benefit is seen, the religious figure at the head is immediately fielded as election propaganda. Undoubtedly, the greatest duty here falls to the press. All these operations are carried out by the press, presented to the public, and the propaganda activity is carried out by newspapers that call themselves Muslim. In this regard, Topçu’s words are like fire; they burn where they touch. Let us read together: “..so much so that there is no evidence or witness that would reveal more perfectly that the Islamic front in our time does not possess a soul and character than the publications that are called Islamic”

Topçu likens these publications to axes struck from the inside at the building of Islam. “Religious newspapers,” he says, “are instruments of interest and slander (lies) that alienate thinking and loving souls from Islam every day.” The author clearly expresses the disappointment he experienced regarding Muslims in the final stages of his life in a letter he wrote to a friend, and these lines are almost nailed to history. You will read that letter at the end of the article. I now want to shed light on the place where Nurettin Topçu saw salvation.

That light is in socialism. And the author defines socialism as follows: “…Socialism is the general name of economic doctrines that emerged in the 19th century and were put forward to ensure equality with other members of society in living conditions and welfare means for large industrial workers. There are many forms of socialism. The common side in all of them is that the means of production and living conditions are taken from individuals and given to the hands of society.”

Let us come to the understanding of socialism in Topçu.

Nurettin Topçu wants to build socialism not on a materialist basis, but on faith, spirituality, and values. In this respect, what his faith tells him and the values of socialism already intersect. How? Let us get the answer from Topçu: “Our socialism is Islam itself. Our cause is to establish a social order based on Islamic morality”

According to him, socialism is the life plan of the happy land, the cause of the rights of the servants that is trampled upon in a way never seen before in our century, and the Sharia of our era.

In Topçu’s world, this also corresponds to spiritualist socialism. And at this very point, the mentioned understanding of socialism appears before us on an “authoritarian” basis. Fatih Yaşlı clarifies this basis as follows: “The ruling class of Topçu’s spiritualist socialism will consist of people he calls “nation mystics.” The nation mystics, who “evaluate and advance the synthesis of land and faith with a deep philosophical-mystical understanding,” will represent the “national will” in spiritualist socialism, and this tutelary administration will be “true democracy.”

In this sense, Topçu approaches the Nazi Germany of the period and says, “German national socialism has been the most perfect realization of state socialism.”

As a result, we can state that Topçu, who remained at the center of debates with the thoughts he defended and the life practice he lived both during his lifetime and afterwards, will continue to be discussed with his ideas on Islamism and socialism.

Let us come to the letter we mentioned above. We think that the lines we will quote from the mentioned letter in a moment will be important for seeing and discussing Turkey’s recent history and today. Please:

"...I have almost no friends left in the country to whose service I have spent my life. I am almost all alone, in a void, and almost in a world other than those around me.

I knew the wretchedness and misery of man, but I had not seen such darkness of spiritual misery. Almost all of those I labored for as human beings were a bunch of pests, alien to the concept of soul and meaning, slaves to self-interest.

One gets to know this East, which is an ocean of immorality, as one lives. Those who look for a human being with a lantern here have not been mistaken. Isn’t there a “mass of people who say we are Muslims”? They constitute the lowest stratum of the East.

Islam, in the form it is lived, has finished the East. Neither science, nor morality, nor God reaches these places anymore. They must first leave everything behind and enter the age of humanity..." (M. Orhan Okay, Nurettin Topçu’s Letters with Memories from Anatolia, p. 139. Cümle Publications, 2nd Edition, 2016)

Sources:

Hüseyin Karaman/Nurettin Topçu

Fatih Yaşlı/ Conservative Anti-Capitalism in Turkey: Nurettin Topçu.

Nurettin Topçu/ The Order of Morality and Islam and Man - Rumi and Sufism.

M. Orhan Okay, Nurettin Topçu’s Letters with Memories from Anatolia