End of the clash of civilizations

Reading the editorial in Sunday's New York Times headlined "End of the Clash of Civilizations," I was relieved to see that Today's Zaman was correct in relating the visit and the forum, at least on an epistemological level. If what brought Obama to Turkey on the days he came was not the forum, what brought Obama and the forum to Turkey on the same days was the same thing: the clash of civilizations. In İstanbul, the leading intellectuals of the world were discussing the stations on the way to reaching an end to that clash, however artificial or even superficial it may be; President Obama promised in Ankara that he was ready to pave the way through those stations, of course, with the help of Turkey and of the Muslim peoples who will recalibrate their relations with America, in particular, and with Judeo-Christian Western civilizations, in general, in line with the Turkish-American "model partnership."

From the very beginning, I have regarded President Obama as a prime example of hero making, expectation raising and presidential marketing. His well-prepared speech in Turkey did its job well and created second-to-none enthusiasm in the country. The response of the mass media to the visit could be summed up in two headlines that caught my eye a day after the visit: "He closed an era in Turkey," said one popular newspaper; the same day, a larger newspaper had the reverse chronology in its headline, saying, "He opened a new era in Turkey."

The Obama administration has not yet done anything concrete in terms of bettering Muslim-Western relations. Declaring that "the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam" sounds quite promising, indeed, but there is a difference between promising and delivering. Obama is the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., the dream of America. But it is still a dream waiting to be actualized. Declaring that he supports a two-state solution for the age-old problem of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is a courageous step, to be sure. But, I have done this thousands of times. Managing to convince Benjamin Netanyahu, a staunch opponent of the two-state solution, to this end is what will account for an actualized dream. That is what the Muslim world is waiting for from Obama.

Declaring that Islam is a wonderful religion and that its holy text deserves the utmost respect is the least a respectful human being should do. We all do this. Managing to convince the world that the terrorism that emanates from the Muslim world has nothing to do with the soul of the religion necessitates extra efforts. Such an effort should be able to address the issues of women's rights, freedom of religion, homophobia and undemocratic regimes properly, at the right time and through separating between cultural reasons of backwardness and the essence of the religion.

We believed and claimed that there was never a real clash of civilizations; thus, we cannot speak about its end. But if we are to speak about the end of what existed, I have to say that what existed is still there and still has the potential to live a long life. What existed was (and is) a project to divide the human Civilization into artificial subcategories of "civilizations" and then to convince people that there was an intrinsic clash between these civilizations.

Civilization (with a capital C; a shared, single, universal Civilization) is by definition aligned towards an alliance, and civilizations (with small c's; separate, multiple, individual, unshared civilizations) are by definition inclined towards a clash. Both the clash and the alliance of civilizations belong to the world of ideas, to the epistemological world, not the ontological one.

Dictatorship, hunger, the AIDS epidemic, backwardness, torture, occupation and denigration, on the other hand, are ontological realities. Obama may have ended one epistemological era with one visit and started another one; turning around a new ontological era will necessitate more effort and more time.