A “Revolutionary” Kurdish Mullah from Turkey: Mehmed Emin Bozarslan and His Intellectual Evolution1

What makes him exceptional is the fact that he had a critical and oppositional voice and was in dialogue and debate with various social and political agents and institutions such as sheikhs, tribal chieftains, mullahs/muftis, leftist intellectual circles in Turkey, the Kurdish left and the Turkish nation-state embodied in such "nation-state apparatus" as the Diyanet Isleri Baskanhgi (Presidency of Religious Affairs),4 the courts and prisons. People are in poverty, [yet] they are in debauch (sefahat)\ However, their sultanate is gradually collapsing, God willing some time soon it will be equal with the earth.7 Referring to the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet, he points to the egalitarian characteristics of Islamic teachings.8 In this way he criticizes the sheikhs' use of their supposedly "holy lineage," which is traced back to the Prophet or his companions as a source of prestige and superiority against common Kurdish peasants. The mufti of the province of Diyarbakir, M. Salih Tannverdi,10 wrote a short response to this book called Inkâr Bulutlartni Siyiran Bir Isik(A Light Tearing the Clouds of Denial).11 On the one hand, Tannverdi claims that Bozarslan denies tasawwuf which is a branch of Islamic knowledge;12 on the other hand, he notes that if Bozarslan is against the degenerate tariqatism, then he agrees with Bozarslan.13 In 1965, Bozarslan published a pamphlet by the title of Gerçekler Konusuyor (Truths are Speaking), in which he refutes Tannverdi's critique.