Page 251 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

says something else. This is the issue. This is the destruction. Is our reli-
gion to be revealed by the Quran, or by others? This has to be decided.
We have been saying for years that there two religions in the Islamic world
as well as in Turkey. Of course, there are many distinctions, but two main
religions that go under the name of Islam. There is the Islam that has been
brought down by the Quran, and then there is the Islam that has been in-
vented. Do you know how long this division has existed in the Islamic
world? . . . [continues uninterrupted for ten to ¤fteen minutes]
The excerpt above is typical of how Yasar Nuri Öztürk responds to “muddled
questions” from Ayse Özgün, which she invariably poses in binary form. He
does this in a highly polemical style, rephrasing Ayse Özgün to formulate and
answer his own questions, bringing in scholarly references, points of fact, ex-
amples from everyday life. What is lost in (my own) translation is the ease with
which Yasar Nuri Öztürk alternates between religious language and everyday
colloquialisms while speaking. Each soliloquy is a tour de force, an exercise in
reduction and simpli¤cation, delivered with “inner conviction” by someone au-
thorized to speak the truth as “a man of scienti¤c learning.” The program ends
with Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s speech amid enthusiastic applause.

Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s Discourse and Rhetoric
During his lengthy soliloquy’s on television Yasar Nuri Öztürk adopts
various overlapping frames of self-representation—always speaking in the ¤rst-
person plural (rarely “my” or “I”), for instance, which simultaneously asserts his
indisputable authority as a theologian, and also underscores his self-certainty
when speaking as a social diagnostician who provides explanations of and reme-
dies for social as well as personal ills. And, of course, he acts as a dedicated “edu-
cator,” who never tires of clarifying abstract ideas by using everyday metaphors
“to reach the masses.” The skill with which he alternates between these different
frames of self-reference, taking time to articulate a set of “reasoned” arguments
and explanations, simultaneously informing and convincing his viewers, is un-
doubtedly the key criterion that makes his performance worth watching for
“educated” viewers.
But the “interpretive contract” between Yasar Nuri Öztürk and his wider,
more heterogeneous audiences is based, I would suggest, on the anticipation that
there will come a crucial moment in his performance when he will adopt a
“combative” or “¤ghter frame.” Nearly every Friday morning there comes a dra-
matic moment when he loses patience and bares his knuckles—boldly standing
up (metaphorically) to state the truths that audiences know from elsewhere.
This is when Yasar Nuri Öztürk lapses into “I” (or when “we” becomes an all-
inclusive term rather than self-referential) and he is transformed into a passion-
ate ¤ghter in a battleground of political adversaries, ¤ghting on “our” behalf—
not only those in the studio or at home but seemingly for the whole nation.
During such “exceptional” moments the hiatus between Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s

240 Ayse Öncü