Book on the journey of the Islamist movement in Turkey

Have you read former Science, Industry and Technology Minister Nihat Ergün's new book? 

A member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Ergün's book titled "Ad?m Ad?m Siyaset" (Step by Step Politics) is a very important book for understanding from where to where the Islamist movement has come and what its problems are.

I did not read the book from the point of daily political fights. I read it to understand the dynamics, issues and adjustment process of the conservative culture that has brought the AK Party with a "National Vision Movement" to power and kept it in power for 12 years.

Nihat Ergün is a well-educated "liberal conservative" intellectual possessing political maturity. He is a graduate of an industrial vocational high school, then the school of economics and administrative sciences. He was interested in Islamism during his high school years. In those years, books that were read in Islamic circles were translations from thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world and some others from Iran. Ergün gave a list of them.

During the heavy days of pressure of the Feb. 28, 1997, era, there were differences of opinion in the movement of former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan; a "neocon" movement was forming.

Erbakan supporters, who were called "traditionalists," held a meeting at the municipality. The speaker referred to Imam al-Mawardi of the 11th century saying, "In Islam, administration is life-long." One person from the audience stood up and told the listeners that a new party under the leadership of Tayyip Erdo?an would be formed. The speaker replied to him, "If there is an existing emir, a caliph, and somebody else stands out, that person's verdict is either to be exiled or killed." ...