Türkiye’s Bid to Build a Regional Order — and the Question of True Islam By Abdullah Ağar
Türkiye’s Bid to Build a Regional Order — and the Question of True Islam
By Abdullah Ağar
Türkiye wants to matter. It wants to shape events in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans, and to carry weight on the global stage. It wants to forge lasting alliances, to produce security and peace, to build a system. It wants stability and peace at home.
It cannot do any of this alongside movements and mindsets that exploit religion and the state for their own interests and act on their own dogmas.
It cannot do it with:
political or ideological Islamists;
so-called “moderate” Islamist networks such as FETÖ;
al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups;
religious communities and orders that use faith for their own gain and believe no one but themselves is on the side of truth;
sectarianism;
systems of rule that look Islamic but rest on one man, one family or one clan: kingdoms, caliphates, sultanates.
This is a reality we keep running from and have never faced.
We have all seen what these groups are, how they have been used, their contradictions and where their loyalties lie.
Choosing to be a political Islamist, a sectarian or a devotee of an order over being a true Muslim has consequences. It meets resistance, rejection, backlash and countermeasures.
This is especially true in the Caucasus and Turkistan. These societies inherited from Soviet ideology an analytical, secular, state-centered way of thinking. Today it produces a deeply pragmatic outlook, and these countries deal with a wide range of actors.
It is just as true in the Middle East. The region carries the historical legacy of Arab and Persian imperialism. It is a stage for the influence struggles of today’s imperial powers, and it is being consumed by the fires of sectarian strife.
Power in the name of faith is not the power of faith
Gathering power in the name of a religion, or of the group one belongs to, is not the same as turning religion’s ethics into strength.
If Türkiye is to build influence, order, peace and security, it needs conceptual and moral superiority. It needs theological and geopolitical wisdom, foresight, justice and a vision of an advanced civilization.
There is a subtler point here. The goal is not a common power that makes everyone the same. It is common ground that can hold differences together.
Only a true understanding of Islam can provide that. I mean an Islam grounded in tawhid, the oneness of God, and in unity, and built on faith, reason, conscience, science, reality, human rights and fair sharing.
Nothing else can provide it. Anything else will break what already exists.
This kind of Islam would also strengthen social peace at home. It would feed shared ideals and goals and deepen people’s sense of dignity, trust and belonging.
That is because Kemalism, nationalism, a commitment to freedom and democratic values do not clash with the justice, human dignity, responsibility and search for truth at the heart of true Islam. Read correctly, the values they stand for can meet on common ground.
Picture a Türkiye that achieves real stability at home with such a model. It joins this true understanding of Islam to geopolitical and strategic wisdom and shows it to the world. The Caucasus and Turkistan above all, and then the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa and the whole world, would hold that Türkiye in the highest regard.
A wound we could not heal
For thousands of years humanity has searched for truth, justice, security, peace and meaning. Just when it seemed to have found them, the Islamic world failed to live by what the Book, and the Prophet in the Book, had taught.
It drifted in two directions. One was the contested politico-religious reading inherited from the Umayyads and Abbasids, which turned religion into a tool of power and Arab political dominance. The other was the worldview of the mullah regime, which grew Persian political influence through religion.
Then the Muslim world split further into countless factions, parties, communities, orders, clerical hierarchies and groups, each casting the others outside the truth.
This fragmentation and this culture of exploitation are among the main reasons why occupation and invasion, proxy wars, sectarian strife and sectarian wars, tribal revolts and civil wars take hold so easily across the Muslim world.
We could not heal our own wound. Nor could we be a balm for humanity’s.
Yet God’s Book called us to read and understand scripture, the universe, humankind and time. It called us to use our reason and to make conscience and justice our foundation. It called on us to meet in the truth rather than divide people for our own interests. It pointed to the true freedom that comes from servanthood to God, not from arrogance. It called on us to carry what is entrusted to us faithfully and to establish justice, not to plunder people’s rights and public property or to dominate others.
Those who claim to believe in tawhid but use it, and power, for their own ends have made Muslims and our region pay the price. They have also made the whole world, humanity and the future pay. And they are still doing it.
The question that troubles me
This is exactly where my concern lies.
Türkiye has seen all of this, lived through it and paid the price. Can it now get to the source code of the problem?
Can it correctly diagnose the threat posed by groups that exploit religion? Can it face its own mistakes, contradictions, shirk, which is associating partners with God, and hypocrisy? Can it solve the problem at its root, in meaning and in action?
Can it offer light, hope and direction to all of humanity and to the future?
In one sense this is very hard, almost impossible.
In another sense it is very easy. I believe that those on the right path have the Creator’s approval and help.
I have lived in the mountains.
No new book, no new prophet
To return to the truth, abandon what is wrong and restore justice, we do not need a new book, a new prophet or a new religion.
What we need is to free the path God has shown us from the shadow of our own interests, ambitions and dogmas.
Whoever walks the right path is guided by the Creator’s approval, and their hope lies in His help.
As the Qur’an puts it, there are those who deceive people about God. They exploit religion and use faith and power for their own interests. The challenge before Türkiye is to build trust, peace and order in spite of them, by living the truth, ethics and justice of Islam.
If we succeed, people and states with reason, conscience and a sense of searching will see the value, meaning and necessity of such common ground.
The world is shaken by threats both abstract and concrete. People and states are searching for truth, stability, order, a working system, peace and justice, and for remedies for humanity and its future. Can Türkiye show them this path?
There are, of course, serious obstacles.
Some groups treat their own members, followers, disciples and initiates as the sole owners of truth. They grant no one else a legitimate place to exist, and they are divided even among themselves. Such groups cannot produce this common ground.
A civilization deserves the name only to the extent that it delivers justice not just to its own people but also to those who differ from it.
Türkiye’s true greatness will not be measured by how much power it gathers in the name of Islam. It will be measured by how fully it keeps Islam’s truth, justice and mercy alive.
Friend and foe alike will respect a Türkiye that does this, or at least tries to.
Conceptual and moral superiority will not give Türkiye absolute strategic immunity. But it will make Türkiye a country whose influence comes not only from its power but also from being in the right. It will strengthen its legitimacy, its credibility and its resilience.
Abdullah Ağar
October 19, 2026
