Why is secularism important?

I wrote an article about secularism in the last month of last year. Given the importance of the subject, I would like to say a few more things about it. This is because secularism is not merely a matter of ethics; it is crucial in many contexts, such as human exploitation, the proper functioning of markets, and the appointment of competent politicians. In my previous article, I addressed the importance of secularism in relation to poverty and included the following statement:

“The crisis we are experiencing today may be partially temporary, but in general, both the world and, even faster, Turkey are drifting toward poverty. The relationship between poverty and religiousness is that religion acts as an opiate, creating a narcotic effect on the impoverished public.”

The understanding and practice of secularism have nothing to do with religion. The view, deliberately voiced in society, that Marxism is against religion is a complete fallacy. Marxism is not against religion, but against the use of the religious phenomenon in the political arena as an opiate for the people to deceive them. After the Soviets were established, Lenin, in a circular he published, requested that the people's religion not be interfered with, but that the religious phenomenon and its practice be prevented from entering the public sphere. Looking at today's conditions, is it not very clear that our people, who are becoming increasingly impoverished, are being lulled to sleep by religion used like an opiate? In interviews, it is observed that when people waiting in queues for hours in the cold and sometimes in the rain for one or two loaves of bread are asked about their political decisions, they give the expected, well-known answer. Would it not be natural for the political power that has secured this guarantee to not worry about losing votes while implementing wrong economic policies as it pleases? In short, lulling the public to sleep with bigoted religious views pushes those in power to make arbitrary decisions or decisions in favor of their party or politics, rather than rational ones. While the people are the ones who suffer from this situation, unfortunately, due to the religious consciousness—or rather, the unconscious perspective—they are pushed into, they cannot understand the situation.

We see that our laborers and most of our retired citizens cover expenses they cannot meet with their wages or retirement income using bank cards, and even try to cover their missing income with bank loans by using cards from multiple banks. Now, if we analyze this situation, especially through the lens of laborers, look at the conclusion we reach:

A laborer cannot receive the equivalent of what they produce as a wage, because the boss suppresses wages to make more profit. Faced with this situation, the laborer tries to obtain the necessary money to meet their needs from bank loans. The laborer who uses a bank loan pays their debt to the bank with interest at the end of the period. If we compare this situation with a scenario where the laborer receives a reasonable wage for their production, we encounter the following picture: When the laborer takes the wage share they did not receive as a loan, they also pay interest on it. In other words, when capital does not give the laborer what they deserve and refers them to the bank, it is actually throwing the laborer into a dual exploitation network. Because when the laborer covers the wage right cut by the boss with a bank loan, they are exposed to an interest burden on top of the exploitation they experience due to the missing wage. This means that in the exploitation of labor, the owner of material capital and the owner of financial capital are passing the ball to each other over the laborer. In this passing, the exploitation of labor intensifies, dragging the laborer into poverty. However, partly due to the system's ideology and partly due to the religious exploitation veil, the laborer cannot perceive the situation in its true dimension and cannot express their political reaction.

Religiousness has a very important function that serves the boss and imperialism. For one thing, starting religiousness from childhood through education means keeping young people away from an education system that works with thought and analysis, and pulling them into the position of ready-to-obey toy soldiers. It is much easier for imperialism to exploit a community with a weakened brain than an enlightened community. What I mean is that catching our youth from childhood and educating them in the cage of religiousness has nothing to do with sincere religion, but is directly related to the imperialist policies of capitalism. Besides collapsing primary, middle, and high schools with Imam Hatip and other reactionary policies, dominating strong universities with reactionary religious cadres provides a huge benefit not to the country, but to the imperialists who come to exploit the country.

It should be understood that the political cadres' adoption of religiousness has nothing to do with a sincere religion and belief system, but has a function that gives the green light to imperialists' maneuvers over the country and facilitates their work. The discourse of “the politician whose forehead touches the ground in prostration,” which has become a catchphrase on everyone's tongue in recent years, was not thrown out by coincidence. The goal here is twofold. First, it is the unconscious support of politicians whose foreheads touch the ground in prostration. Well, what could the unconscious support of politicians by the public have to do with the functioning of imperialism? The event is this: A political power that has gained the great trust of its people has its transactions or agreements with domestic and foreign capital implicitly approved, whether understood by the public or not, and the politician does not receive severe criticism; in fact, such projects are often not even reflected to the layers of the public. When this is the case, when imperialists who have ambitions in the country's economy convince only the government wing, on the condition of paying the price, they can implement any project they want over the country without being exposed to the reaction of the public.

Here, my dear readers, in today's conditions where global capitalism cannot overcome its crisis and therefore imperialism is rising, the role of the rise of religiousness is, on one hand, to veil the concessions politicians give to imperialists, and on the other hand, to hide the administration, which has hardened due to the economic crisis, under the deception of religiousness. In other words, bigoted religiousness, which is perceived by our people as a sacred belief but has nothing to do with a sincere belief system, is both the way and the method of laying the paths of imperialism to the heart of the country and feeding the hardening of the country's politics to the public with a velvet glove.