Letters ( revised ) | The Twenty-Ninth Letter | 483
(447-527)
As for you, you pseudo-patriotic  imposters! You possess in a way that will make  you  forget  the  true  national  pride  of  the  Turks,  a  metaphorical,  racial, temporary, and hateful brotherhood. I ask you: does the Turkish nation consist only of heedless and lustful youths between the ages of twenty and forty? And is what is beneficial for them and will serve them – as demanded by nationalist patriotism – an European education which will only increase their heedlessness, accustom them to immorality, and encourage them in what is forbidden? Is it to amuse them temporarily and so make them weep in old age? If nationalist patriotism consists of this, and this is progress and the happiness of life, yes, if you are a Turkist and nationalist like that, I flee from such Turkism, and you can flee from me, too! If you have even a jot of patriotism, intelligence, and fairness, consider the following divisions of society and give me an answer. It is like this:

The sons of this land known as the Turkish nation consist of six parts. The first part are the righteous and the pious. The second are the sick and those stricken by disaster. The third are the elderly. The fourth are the children. The fifth are the poor and the weak. And the sixth are the young. Are the first five groups not Turks? Do they have no share of nationalist patriotism? Is it nationalist patriotism to vex those five groups, spoil their pleasure in life, and destroy those things that console them in order  to give  drunken  enjoyment  to the  sixth  group?  Or is it enmity towards  the nation? According to the rule “The word is with the majority,” that which harms the majority is inimical, not friendly!

I ask you, is the greatest benefit of the believers and the pious, the first group, to be found in a European-type civilization? Or is it to be found in thinking of eternal happiness through the truths of belief, in travelling the way of truth, for which they are most desirous, and in finding a true solace? The way the misguided and bogus patriots like you have taken extinguishes the spiritual lights of the pious people of belief, destroys their true consolation, and shows death to be eternal nothingness and the grave to be the door to everlasting separation.

Are the benefits of the disaster-stricken, the sick, and those who have despaired of life, who form the second group, to be found in the way of a European-type, irreligious  civilization?  For those unfortunates  want a light, a solace. They want a reward in return for the calamities they have suffered. They want to take their revenge on those who have oppressed them. They want to repulse the terrors at the door of the grave, which they are approaching.

No Voice

Letters ( revised )