these young Students and preparing some of them to lead the Risale-i Nur movement in later years. And also it may perhaps be seen as symbolic that while Bediuzzaman had written to his leading students of the older generation in Isparta wanting one of them to go to Ankara to the Directorate of Religious Affairs as described above, in the event it was the young Mustafa Sungur who deputized for Bediuzzaman, both on this occasion and many subsequent occasions.
In Istanbul and Ankara in particular, young. enterprising, and devoted Risale-i Nur Students, many of whom were university students, performed great services for the Risale-i Nur and the cause of religion. In Ankara they were active among the Deputies in the National Assembly, writing letters and circulars putting forward Bediuzzaman's views and the case of the Risale-i Nur, meeting with Deputies, and particularly one's known to be sympathetic towards to Islam, and also pointing out and warning about various stratagems and plots of the Republican People's Party (RPP) supporters and enemies of religion who had infiltrated the Democrat Party.
One case concerned the destruction of one hundred and seventy copies of the large collections, The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar, seized by the authorities in Isparta. This was despite their having been cleared by the Justice Minister of the Democrat Government and was evidently part of a plan of RPP supporters to arouse antagonism among the Risale-i Nur Students towards the Democrats, for whom they formed an important body of support.
This fanatical partisanship, which Bediuzzaman alluded to in a letter he wrote to the new President and also warned against on other occasions, was an additional element in the harassment and oppression which Bediuzzaman and his students continued to receive from certain sections of officialdom. These officials were supporters of the RPP, some representing the Mason and communist currents within it, and they continuously hatched plots by which to divide the forces working for religion and prevent them uniting. Thus, since the governing structure of the country was still largely in the hands of supporters of the RPP, the repression of Bediuzzaman and the Risale-i Nur Students continued throughout this ten years, as did the