Is the society a dome or a mosaic?

Bulaç also writes for Today's Zaman. He may well be wishing to elaborate on his dome analogy in his column. But what has been publicized is already in the public domain. With a bit of interpretation, I may say that the dome analogy is more acceptable as a model for Eastern pluralism than the oft-repeated mosaic analogy.

A mosaic of different ethnic, religious and linguistic identities is an analogy for post-modern pluralism where parts form the whole and where the whole will be incomplete without any one of the parts. But while the whole defines the places of the parts within the architectonics of the whole, the parts do not necessarily belong to the whole. They can well be taken out of the whole and be contained in other mosaics. The parts form the whole in a mosaic, but the whole does not shape the parts. They just contribute to the whole.

Bulaç's dome analogy fits Eastern societies better. Especially in Turkey, with its Ottoman and Seljuk background of not only incorporating the differences into the unity, but also shaping them as part of the society, the whole is formed by the parts and the parts are reformatted by the whole. You cannot take a stone out of a dome and put it into another one. That will harm not only the dome, but also the stone. That is why the prime minister said, “Cem Karaca missed Turkey, and Turkey missed Cem Karaca during his exile.”

The dome analogy has in its center the keystone. The keystone is the cardinal stone at the very center of the dome that keeps all the stones of the dome standing as parts of the general whole. In Muslim and Christian architecture, the keystone symbolizes the monotheistic faith, the eternal unity. In Bulaç's dome analogy, the keystone stands for social unity in plurality, which is once again based on monotheistic faith. This position can be translated into a political statement: Only in a monotheistic society can the parts form the whole and simultaneously be formed by the whole. The whole does not define the identities of the parts, but the parts belong to the whole.

This belongingness is a voluntary act of the part being reshaped by the whole. In the dome analogy, the society is not a melting pot. It is not a mosaic of different colors only. It is a mutual give and take between the society and sub-societal groups and individuals.

Using the dome analogy, I may say that the prime minister was right in saying: “Without Ahmet Yesevi, Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli, Pir Sultan Abdal and Hacı Bayram-ı Veli, Turkey would be devoid of its true foundations. Without Yunus Emre, Turkey is mute, and without Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, it is spiritless. Closing its ears to Sabahat Akkiraz, Turkey lacks folk songs. Compositions that ignore Tatyos Efendi remain unfinished. Songs that do not pay homage to Ahmet Kaya, who wrote ‘Farewell, My Two Eyes,' lack an essential quality. As one cannot imagine a Turkey without Mehmet Akif, a country with Nazım Hikmet is a deficient Turkey. You may or may not accept their ideas, but without Ahmed-i Hani or Said Nursi of Bitlis, Turkey's spirit is deflated.” But I may add also that “Without the love and reverence the Turkish people -- with all its Turkmen, Kurdish, Circassian, Alevi, Sunni sub-groups -- gave to them, Yesevi would not be what he is in the minds of humanity. Without the spirit the Turkish people added to the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes, Rumi would not be able to breathe a spirit into our materialistic worlds. Without Turks lending an ear to Akkiraz and to Kaya, they would not be able to be the representations of love, yearning, cause and protest.”