From Muhammed-ül Emin (The Trustworthy One) to Distrust: Piety, Power, and Turkey’s Great Moral Fracture

Yusuf İnan
Journalist | Political & Strategic Analyst

**From “Muhammed-ül Emin (The Trustworthy One)” to Distrust:

Piety, Power, and Turkey’s Great Moral Fracture**

Recent statements by Bilal Erdoğan, in which he emphasized the need to rebuild the perception that “Muslims are trustworthy people,” are not merely descriptive observations. They represent a loud and long-overdue political and social reckoning spanning nearly a quarter of a century. Today in Turkey, the sacred bond between piety, trust, and justice has been profoundly severed.

Yet the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was founded precisely at a time when this bond was strong. The belief that “a Muslim is honest, does not betray trust, and fears violating the rights of others” constituted the party’s most powerful source of social legitimacy. For many years, this moral capital endured. The distance between the state and society narrowed, religious communities gained public visibility for the first time, and Turkey implemented significant reforms.

Over time, however, this reservoir of trust steadily eroded.

The Collapse of Trust and the Trauma of the Cemaat

The most destructive component of this erosion was the structure built by Fethullah Gülen and his movement. Once idealized as a harmless religious community—described as people who “would not hurt a fly”—this structure gradually transformed into a system that recognized neither law, justice, nor morality.

By occupying positions within the judiciary, law enforcement, and bureaucracy, it completely deviated from the prophetic moral ideal of Muhammed-ül Emin — the embodiment of trustworthiness and moral integrity. What should have represented ethical restraint instead became a mechanism of domination.

Illegal wiretapping, fabricated trials, the public humiliation of innocent individuals, and the ruthless use of state power for sectarian interests not only dismantled the rule of law but also shattered the moral foundations of Islam itself. This structure oppressed, humiliated, and dispossessed the Turkish nation—and it did so in the name of religion.

As a result, the credibility of Islam and Muslims was deeply damaged. Society began to associate piety with injustice, spoken of in the same breath.

July 15: When the Swamp Was Exposed

The treacherous coup attempt of July 15 revealed, in its starkest form, how far this distorted structure had gone. This time, the movement attempted to drag all 85 million citizens of Turkey into the swamp it had carefully constructed. When it failed, its leaders fled abroad, leaving behind an immense social and institutional wreckage.

More than three million people were directly investigated, prosecuted, or imprisoned. Yet this number alone does not capture the true scope of the devastation. Through family ties and social networks, nearly 85–86 million people became indirect subjects of terror-related investigations. Society was pushed into confrontation with the AK Party government and President Erdoğan.

This was not merely a security crisis; it evolved into a profound crisis of faith, justice, and moral legitimacy.

Judiciary, Piety, and Contradiction

Presidents of the Constitutional Court delivered speeches on rights, law, and justice. They quoted verses from the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet in practice, fair and balanced judgments failed to materialize. The Turkish judiciary lost its equilibrium; the scales of justice no longer weighed evenly.

A nation groaning under judicial pressure emerged. Society lost hope in religiously conservative leaders—and worse, began to fear them. Leaders who presented themselves as pious, along with sects and religious communities, accumulated wealth, violated human rights, exposed private lives, and committed acts explicitly forbidden by both the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad.

Most dangerously, faith in God itself weakened. Power and wealth were sanctified. Blessings were no longer attributed to God but to personal merit. The doors to shirk—the association of power and authority with divine status—were quietly opened.

Power Taken Away in a Single Night

On the night of July 15, this arrogant order collapsed. Everything they possessed was taken away overnight. What God grants, He can also reclaim. Those who deified power, money, and state authority were stripped of it all in a single night.

Yet the destruction left behind was immense.

Hope or Despair?

Bilal Erdoğan’s call to restore the image of the trustworthy Muslim therefore carries both hope and deep despair. Hope—because the problem is finally being acknowledged openly. Despair—because journalists such as İsmail Saymaz have argued that significant segments of the Turkish judiciary remain under the influence of sects and religious communities, suggesting that this call may lack a firm institutional foundation.

Unlawful decisions issued by religious judges—who should fear God the most—have weakened people’s belief in God itself. People began to distance themselves from religion. Mosques emptied. Faith came to be associated with fear rather than justice and mercy.

Children of religious families increasingly turned toward deism or atheism. A generation raised under the slogan of a “pious generation” drifted toward destructive paths. The appearance of individuals known for their religious identities in drug operations and shocking sexual and psychological scandals deepened the social rupture.

Where Is Turkey Heading?

Today, Turkey faces the reality of a society distancing itself from Islam—not because of the faith itself, but because of those who claimed to represent it. The image of Muslim Turkey as humanity’s last moral hope has been gravely damaged by FETÖ-like deviations and by sects and religious communities operating within the state.

If the phrase “Muslims are trustworthy” is to regain its meaning, it cannot be restored through rhetoric alone. It requires law. It requires justice. It requires a genuine prioritization of the rights of others. Otherwise, this call will remain a well-intentioned but hollow wish.

What Turkey needs is not a new language of power, but a renewal of morality, a restoration of justice, and a return to the primordial ethic of trustworthiness embodied in Muhammed-ül Emin. Otherwise, what is lost will not only be political credibility, but the faith and future hope of an entire nation.

Yusuf İnan

www.wisenewspress.com 

Yusuf İnan is a journalist and author. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of WiseNewsPress.com, SehitlerOlmez.com, and Yerelgundem.com, and specializes in strategic and political analysis of Turkish and global affairs.