Page 255 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

“secular Muslim” recede into the background, as “we” become united in the ¤ght
against those perpetuating “fake Islam.”

The “Young Turk” of the Divinity Establishment?
Public arguments acquire their meaning from what is known and an-
ticipated on the part of those who listen, read, or watch. But their public nature
means that they enter into circulation in cross-reference to other arguments, as
part of a broader ¤eld of citations, controversies, and emissions. To assert an
argument “publicly” means entering a ¤eld of interplay with other discourses,
or what Warner (2002) describes as “a cross-citation ¤eld of many other people
speaking.” Circulation of arguments in public is therefore a “re®exive process”
he suggests, rather than one of passive relay and mechanical diffusion. Argu-
ments acquire “talk value” as they move in different spaces of circulation, mo-
bilized, reframed, or challenged by interested strategic actors, both dominant
and subordinate.
What has lent “talk value” to Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s polemical arguments—
beyond his immediate appeal to television audiences—has been his readiness to
publicly challenge the of¤cial stance of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs
on a variety of issues. Since he himself is a product and prominent member of
the same establishment, he has come under heavy criticism within its closed
circles as a “sensationalist” and “publicity seeker,” accused of trivializing serious
theological debates for the sake of ratings. But his arguments have found wider
public resonance, because they came into public circulation at a time when the
centralized Directorate of Religious Affairs was under growing political criti-
cism, from multiple vantage points.
Yasar Nuri Özturk’s polemical arguments entered the public ¤eld amid a
multiplicity of critical discourses that targeted the of¤cial stance and practices
of the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The silence of Turkey’s Divinity Estab-
lishment amid raging political controversy—or, more accurately perhaps, its ef-
forts to maintain its of¤cial status above and outside public debate by refusing
to respond to any and all public criticism—created a chasm, a silence if you will.
Within this vacuum Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s solo voice was ampli¤ed, resonating
beyond his immediate audiences, to be picked up and reframed by various stra-
tegic actors in the public arena. His ideas began to make headlines as “sensa-
tional news”—because they contradicted the of¤cial injunctions of the Direc-
torate. And Yasar Nuri Öztürk himself, ever the publicity seeker, seemed to bask
in media attention as his arguments were interpreted and framed as “breaking
taboos.” Public speculation began to center on whether he was—as the popular
weekly Aktuel put it boldly on its cover story in 1988—“the Young Turk of the
Divinity Establishment?” or “the Ventriloquist of the Military?”
So the drama of “Yasar Nuri Ozturk versus the Directorate of Religious Af-
fairs” acquired an autonomy of its own as a public text, open to alternative po-
litical readings. Many of the “radical” ideas he propounded had a lengthy his-
tory of ideological struggle behind them. His arguments for vernacularization,

244 Ayse Öncü