Until [Edmund] Husserl came up in the past century and provided a name with a universal acceptance, it was called, ‘First Philosophy.’ It was a metaphysical approach that was founded to explore by going down to the essence between the relations of existence and inter-existence. Once the essence of existence was defined, it was also going to be possible to explain any kind of communication or interaction. Let’s record that this approach accepts every kind of existence as having an 'essence.'
Two weeks ago, my name appeared as a guest in the column of Ali Bulac, a master of the pen...‘Weird’ was what he called an editorial I wrote on whether Israel's nuclear capacity is a threat to world peace and stated that I endorsed that there is a difference from the point of the 'threshold of madness' that renders it necessary for a possible use of nuclear weapons by Arab leaders in the Middle East and the leaders of Israel. When Durmus Hocaoglu criticized Herkul Millas’s article, which equated nationalism with diseases like AIDS and SARS and when Ahmet Turan Alkan said, ‘Hoca misunderstood,’ Hocaoglu took this as another insult. I will not fall into the same mistake and say, 'Expert misunderstood.' Surely, I could not explain that the difference mentioned is what the Israeli rulers perceive. It is correct, I said the Israeli rulers are not that mad. And the week after that, I said, ‘I was mistaken.’ But I never said Arab leaders are crazy... Since ‘Master’ Ali Bulac has invited me to his column, he has also called on me to comment on whether the Middle East crisis is 'a regional and religious problem or whether it is a problem that is based on the fundamental ontological differences between races.' It is not very clear what Bulac’s position on this matter is. Therefore, what I am writing now is neither criticism nor appraisal. Asserting the Middle East conflict to have an ontological basis would be exactly to make the same mistake as Edward Said, who would criticize the Orientalists. Orientalism emanated from ontological and epistemological discrepancy, which exists between the East and West and which has been accepted as having no basis. To assert an ontological difference (that looks to the essence of existence) between the Sons of Israel and the Sons of Ismael, would firstly be asserting that races have 'essences'; and this is called racism. This approach brings to mind the thesis that is all about the struggles between the historical Zoroastrian 'Children of Light and the Children of the Darkness,’ which is found in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, and which was passed from the Judaic Melamis to the Essens religious sect.
I also know how some intellectuals make ontological explanations about the Middle Eastern conflict by commenting on the essence of land and not of race. According to this, the Palestinian land 'is the land that drinks blood.' Everyone who goes there gets beneath this conflict, which is in the nature of the land. Or some other people would try to explain the Middle East unrest through cosmological ontology: According to this, in the creation plan of Allah, there is a certain amount of blood that is needed to be shed here and there, and the essence of the being prevents this blood from being shed. However, when this 'blood threshold' is cleared, the being becomes satisfied with the blood that is necessary for its nature, and calms down.
He Ali Bulac himself knows the deficiencies in ontology that he talks about a new approach which is the first ring of a chain, that is Marifetullah as a result, and surmounts ontology in the article of Marifetu'l Halk. By assuming that talent has no 'knowledge of essence,' we can accept that Bulac is excused of the criticisms above. However, at a time when Edward Said is being praised to the skies, which is not fair according to my belief, we need not fall into the same mistake of Edward Said's approach of the 'imperative nature' that he sees as the biggest mistake of Orientalism. The Middle East conflict is a regional and political encounter. It also has religious, global, economic, border and mental dimensions. But it does not have any ontological dimension.
September 29, 2003
