Dateline Ankara: On the highways and byways of the
New Age, our latest item takes us not to the mystical crossroads
of the etheric or the astral planes but to the earthly plains of
Anatolia, where a nation of seventy million Muslims finds itself
at a crossroads all its own. That country—modern
Turkey—is a geographic crossroads, where the European
landmass meets the Middle East; it's a religious and cultural
crossroads, where traditional faith and modern secularism
converge; it's also a political crossroads, where the most
progressive society in the Islamic world is trying to make a
historic leap into the European Union. But who knew that now,
Turkey is a postmodern spiritual crossroads as well,
and that the angels, astrologers, and aromatherapists of the New
Age are marching from Europe and sailing from America to
colonize the contemporary Muslim spiritual marketplace?
Take, as an example, the story of Hasan Celiktas, a
twenty-nine-year-old from Turkey's capital city of Ankara who
was inspired to pick up the banner of post-traditional, Western
spirituality by his encounter with Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old
“entity” channeled by a Tacoma, Washington,
housewife. Last year, he and a few friends founded a popular
internet magazine called derKi (www.derki.com), whose
name joins the Turkish word dergi, or
“magazine,” with ki, “life
energy.” Since its humble beginnings, derKi's
colorful and eclectic blend of online spiritual investigations
and pop-culture commentary, fiction and interviews, essays and
reviews has generated some impressive numbers among Islamic
youth: 300,000 hits a month from 50,000 individual readers.
Articles from a hundred different writers include “Yunus
Emre's Humanism,” “Quantum Thought Technique,”
“Top 20 Spiritual Movies,” and “Semsu Hor: A
Woman-Scented, Elf-Flavoured Fairy Tale.” Topics range
from renewable energy to the dangers of smoking, from lucid
dreaming to high heels and the healing power of cats.
“The multicolored energy of our culture gives Turkey a
great potential for adding to the world's spiritual progress and
awareness,” says Celiktas. “But at the same time,
many Turkish people are unaware of the fact that the world is
changing rapidly and about to come to a breaking point. They
don't realize the significance of our country and of the
opportunity we have to help find new solutions.” With its
emphasis on relatively lightweight spiritual subjects, at first
glance derKi might seem unlikely to advance the
evolution of human consciousness very far—at least to any
Westerner familiar with the limitations of the more superficial
aspects of postmodern spiritual fare. Yet Celiktas and his crew
of volunteer writers are actually quite sophisticated,
displaying a refreshing lack of naïveté and making
incisive comments and critiques that apply as accurately to New
Agers in America and Europe as they do to their Turkish
counterparts.
“In Turkey, New Age spirituality is growing very fast,
but we believe that much of this growth is unhealthy,”
Celiktas explains. “People who are bored of their lives
are chasing new identities, buying cell phone covers with
yin-yang designs from a corner shop. They learn these concepts
and then wear them, saying, 'I've found myself.' But when you
look at what most of these people do, you see that they're
trying to act like angels with artificial smiles on their faces,
but they're not aware of what's going on in the world. Then one
day when a shocking event happens, this fake world tumbles down
and they find themselves depressed, in a deeper
crisis.”
As New Age thought and culture spread further and further
around the world, it's heartening to see them being met with
this kind of open-minded, intelligent skepticism. After all, as
Celiktas himself points out, “We like to say that real
spirituality has to apply to real life, and it never promises a
rose garden.” With plans to expand its English edition
(available at http://en.derki.com), a recently launched internet
radio station, and an international spiritual festival in the
cards, derKi is doing everything it can to make sure
that in Anatolia and beyond, Muslims looking for purpose and
meaning outside the boundaries of traditional religion can begin
to explore what the postmodern West has to offer. Even better,
they're striving to filter it all through a perspective big
enough to keep this latest generation of seekers from getting
stuck there.