through their reactions. I rejected and look no part in political movements when among my own people and thousands of friends at the most crucial opportunity, and fled from politics as though fleeing from the Devil considering it to be the greatest crime to damage through political partisanship service to true belief, which is most sacred and which it is not permissible to harm by anything... It is not only me, but the province of Isparta and all who know me, and indeed anyone who possesses reason and a conscience, will meet with disgust the slanders of those who say, There is such a organization and you are hatching political plots, and will say to them, You are accusing him due to your own malicious plans...." Bediuzzaman continued:
"Our business is belief. Through the brotherhood of belief, we are brothers with ninety-nine per cent of the people of Isparta and in this country. Whereas a society or organization is the alliance of a minority within the majority. Ninety-nine people do not form a society in the face of one man..." And he concluded answering this charge by pointing out how unrealistic it was to wonder where someone who had managed to live on a hundred lira in ten years and had worn the same patched cloak for seven years had obtained the money for the organization he was supposed to have formed .
The main point on which the trial rested, however, was the vexed question of secularism, in the cause of which all the radical changes since the establishment of the Republic had been brought about. What lay at the base of the accusations against Bediuzzaman was that he had opposed the Government and its programme of secularization. While for his part, Bediuzzaman denied that he had opposed it, arguing that "the secular republic means the separation of religion from (the matters of) this world" and that since, according to the principle [of secularism] the secular republic remains impartial and does not interfere with those without religion, so too of course it also should not interfere with those with religion on whatever pretext."That is to say, secularism should ensure freedom of conscience, and of expression, and other liberties. This conflict of interpretations over the meaning of secularism and how it