Criticizing Hizmet

İhsan Yılmaz

When we criticize the Justice and Development Party (AKP), some of its supporters counter-attack us and without responding to our concrete and constructive criticism; they ask why we do not ever criticize Hizmet.

I know that their response is not ethical since first of all they need to attend to the criticism directed towards the AKP and then they will be free to criticize Hizmet.

If these people have concrete evidence or reasonable arguments against Hizmet or some of its activities, they are more than welcome to elaborate on this. Many people have been writing libelous books and articles about Hizmet for decades and they are free to do so. Can anyone say that they were threatened or their bosses were asked to fire them? No. Ergenekon and affiliated case is something else and they are complicated; until those who accuse Hizmet prove it, we cannot say that people are currently tried for their anti-Hizmet publications. Thus, we need to look at the general picture. Several people who wrote anti-Hizmet books have openly stated that they have never faced any pressure from anyone regarding their books.

My experience with individuals who criticize Hizmet shows that generally speaking they cannot come up with either solid evidence or reasonable arguments against Hizmet. For instance, in the Twitter-sphere, I come across people who tell me that Hizmet needs to be criticized and I ask them to start. What they say is that Hizmet is doing terrible things. I say all right but what is your evidence? They cannot respond to this other than resorting to conspiracy theories. In some cases, their concrete evidence is that Hizmet is not hard on the West, Jews and so on. These are not black and white issues.

Some of them say that the media that are affiliated with Hizmet have been very pro-AKP and do not give enough space to the opposition parties. I can agree with this criticism and would prefer a more constructively critical stance towards the AKP. If some of the AKP leaders are upset with, for instance my, criticism nowadays, one reason is that they were accustomed to the Hizmet media’s extremely polite criticism that the AKP unfortunately did not understand since it was too polite. Another criticism that I can direct at Hizmet is that it does not have a proper hierarchical organization. Yes, there are elders (“abis”) who visit the Hizmet projects at advisory capacity and there are some informal very loose networks, but the lack of strict hierarchy may pave the way for the fragmentation of Hizmet, at least on a national level. Other than these, I have not come across a concrete and serious criticism. When I ask to hear more, people tell me that they cannot say! Or some others say that it is not appropriate to do so over the Internet -- that they would contact me somehow, but I never do get contacted.

Saying all this, I must underline that equating a faith-based volunteer movement with a political, especially a ruling political party is utterly wrong. Its volunteers and donors have a primary right to question and criticize the movement but as long as it does not harm them, the others, the country, etc., people can stay away from the movement.

What about the political parties? They ask for our votes and claim to serve us. We can of course criticize them constructively, or choose not to. Do the opposition parties have to be constructive? Were the AKP leaders in opposition always constructive and polite? Of course not. What is more, when elected, these politicians capture the state power, controlling the treasury, police, army and so on. What do we poor citizens have? Our votes from election to election but most importantly our voice, our freedom of speech and our media.

Yet, the AKP leaders openly ask the media bosses to fire their journalists just because they did not like their criticism, even criticism that did not include even one impolite word. The case in point is the Cüneyt Özdemir incident. I cannot even go into journalists such as Nuray Mert who lost their jobs because of the AKP’s pressure. What else? Our jet fighter accidentally bombed and killed 34 villagers but the prime minister has so far refused to apologize. He regularly uses offensive language against people who criticize him. He even insults them. He promised to democratize the county but has not been doing anything to tackle the military tutelage since at least the last elections even though he can do many things. Kurds, Alevis and non-Muslims still have several issues that the AKP could easily solve.

Are these not concrete problems that can and must be criticized? But instead of this, pro-AKP writers every day keep attacking the Taraf daily and journalist Ahmet Altan, who criticize the prime minister’s perceived mistakes.

Published on Today's Zaman, 14 September 2012, Friday