THE THIRD SAID

• Introduction

We come now to the last ten years of Bediuzzaman's life and the last of its three main stages, in Bediuzzaman's own words, that of the Third Said. The Third Said is generally defined in terms of changes Bediuzzaman made in the way he had patterned his life over many years and also in his involving himself more closely with social and political developments.
The emergence of the Third Said roughly coincided with the defeat of the Republican People's Party in the general elections of May, 1950, and coming to power of the Democrat Party under Adnan Menderes, although while still in Afyon Prison Bediuzzaman wrote that he "surmised" that "a Third Said" would emerge. With the end of tyrannical RPP rule, the restrictions on Bediuzzaman's movements were lifted and he spent these years largely in Emirdag and Isparta, with visits to Istanbul, Ankara and other places as was required by either the ever-expanding activities connected with the Risale-i Nur, or to make court appearances. For despite the new Government, the bureaucracy and governing structure of the country was still largely in the hands of supporters of the former regime. Thus, copies of the Risale-i Nur continued to be seized, Bediuzzaman and his students continued to suffer repression, the court cases continued; there was no halt in the struggle against unbelief and the forces working for communism and irreligion.
In the early fifties, in numerous villages and towns in many regions of Turkey Risale-i Nur Students continued to write out copies by hand and distribute and read them, while in Isparta and Inebolu it was reproduced on the duplicating machines and