The head of religious affairs, Ali Erbas, has overshadowed President Erdogan with his statements in recent days.

"Overshadowing" comes not only from the attention paid to what Erbas says, but also from his "setting a hot political agenda" by making a new statement every day, deepening his criticized views.

We'll see how long Erdogan will allow himself to be overshadowed. Of course, Erbas does everything he says with the green light from President Erdogan. Therefore, Erdogan has his support behind him. But the most direct and open support for Erbas came from the MHP (the Nationalist Movement Party) leader Devlet Bahceli.

In a written statement the previous day, the MHP chairman Bahceli offered his full support to Erbas while harshly criticizing those who negatively reacted to the "opening of the judicial year" with Erbas's prayer.

"It is literally primitive that the prayer read by the Head of Religious Affairs is met with a violent reaction in some circles. Turkey is a Muslim country. The head of religious affairs, Mr. Ali Erbas, did the right thing. And our support is absolute", Bahceli said in his long statement, responding to criticism of Erbas's  prayers at the "opening of the judicial year". However, since the statement was made on September 9th,  it is safe to say that he has also given his "full support" to Erbas’s further views, which have become an advocacy of a "sharia order" by going beyond a "prayer" in the following 10 days.

Thus, Bahceli has also disappointed those who expect him to say something about Erbas that will create a rift in the ranks of the Republican Alliance.

However, there is also an objection from the courtiers to the opening of the judicial year with prayer.

Using every opportunity to support Erdogan, VP (Patriotic Party) leader [former Maoist] Dogu Perincek said, "It is a very clear abuse of religion to start the judiciary year with a prayer".  But Perincek did not criticise Erdogan. He said Erdogan was misled by his entourage. Otherwise, Erdogan wouldn't have made such mistakes!

ACCORDING TO ERBAS, THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM OF YOUTH IS FORGETTING TO 'BE A SERVANT'!

However, while Erbas did not seem to care about Perincek's criticism, he continued his progress in the course he openly started at the opening of Hagia Sophia as a mosque with the space he received from Bahçeli patting him on the back.

The previous day, speaking at the inauguration of the 2nd Youth Workshop in Ankara, Erbas said:  "With the global and social processes taking place, the problems of youth are growing day by day. At this point, the individuality, worldliness, virtual life, popular culture and everyday understandings that affect social life with all its meanings, that took the youth away from servitude which is the main purpose of life, have surrounded youth from all sides. There's an interaction that makes the young man forget that he's a servant!.. There's a corruption of values and a crisis of civilization.”

At first glance, a capitalist society seems to be a critique of modernism, but this attitude, just like Isis, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, does not transcend the problems of the day by crossing capitalism forward; but backwards, it returns to the medieval values, drawing humanity from the  "citizen" line reached 500 years ago to the "being a servant"  line. And he's urging youth to return to the consciousness of being a servant.

YOUTH WILL REJECT 'BEING A SERVANT'

Of course, Erbas does not just make calls; he also wants measures taken to "abandon the values of the digital age" like social media censorship, radical measures to flood education with religion, continuing initiatives to regulate all areas of public life in line with religious values...

In his statement the previous day, Erbas returned his main point of attention to youth.

The lesson learned from the failure of the 20-year AKP rule to "raise religious generations" and "be unable to become intellectual power in charge" is not about purpose, but in the form of not using the regressive forces at hand sufficiently to leap backwards on the road to the goal.

Therefore, while congregations, cults and Salafist focuses are supported and deployed as forces of terrorism in politics, the directorate of religious affairs seeks to give legitimacy to these religious-reactionary chambers to open the door to for them to enable the communities of cults and predecessor organizations to be more effectively deployed as partners of the MEB and to convince youth to "become servants".

However, Erbas cannot be expected to find what he expects from his politics, which calls on youth to abandon "individuality, worldliness, virtual life, popular culture" and return to "the main purpose of life" "to become a servant. Youth will push back on Erbas's call to abandon "being a  citizen" and "to be a servant".

That's why Erbas's and AKP's "secret agenda" for the flooding of religion in all areas of life facilitates the means of exposing the objectives of the Erdogan-AKP government.