overrun all Eastern Europe, its overwhelming presence to the North and aggressive stance towards Turkey pushed Turkey to join the West. So too within Turkey, since the establishment of the Republic, Moscow and its agents and sympathizers had been working for its spread. This other "destructive" current of unbelief was also trying to create anarchy. Bediuzzaman pointed out in the above letter that it would only be halted by the Qur'an and the Turkish nation which was "fused with Islam and was one with it." [^285]

[^285]:Ibid., 214-5.

It was with these covert forces working on behalf of the first current above, "the secret committees" and "atheistic organization whose roots are abroad", that Bediuzzaman had been struggling with since before the setting up of the Republic, even since the days of the Constitutional Revolution. Seeing him as an obstacle to spreading irreligion in Turkey and corrupting its people, they had employed every device and stratagem to have him silenced. Some of these had resulted in the trials and imprisonment. Others were the attempts to poison him. Now in Emirdağ, their plans included mobilizing government influence against Bediuzzaman by means of certain officials. [^286]

[^286]:Ibid., 189-90.

With regard to communism, in addition to the external threat, it had gained considerable strength within the country since İnönü came to power on Ataturk's death in 1938. The policies he followed favoured its spread, and through such means as the setting up in 1940 of village institutes for the training of teachers, foresaw its eventual establishment. He had ties with Soviet Russia and in addition appointed communist sympathizers to high office, such as Şükrü Saraçoğlu, Prime Minister from 9 July 1943 to 5 August 1946, and Hasan Ali Yücel, the Education Minister. The two were personally involved in Bediuzzaman's and his students' arrest prior to the Denizli trials. The Kaymakam, Abdülkadir Uraz, especially appointed to Emirdağ by the Interior Minister in 1945 in order to exert pressure on Bediuzzaman was a socialist. When forced by the threat of Russian aggression to turn to the West, İnönü was obliged to take the path of democracy, liberalization, leading to greater religious freedom; this also drove those secretly working for this cause to increase their efforts to silence Bediuzzaman and halt the spread of the Risale-i Nur.

Together with the problems and moral decline these two currents had already caused in Turkey, Bediuzzaman saw the real dangers to lie in the future. Just as twenty years previously his foreseeing the present situation