DEBATES of TURKISH NATIONALISTS and ISLAMISTS

TÜRK MİLLİYETÇİLERİ ve İSLAMCILARI ARASINDAKİ TARTIŞMALAR

Aşağıdaki metin, Osmanlı’nın son dönemi ve Cumhuriyet’in başlarında Türk Milliyetçileri ve İslamcıları arasındaki tartışmaları konu edinen ve Japonya’da sunduğum bir tebliğin özetidir.

İngilizce Başlığın Türkçesi: ‘Türk Milliyetçileri ve İslamcıları Arasındaki Tartışmalar’

Bu özeti, hem bilgi hem de bir tebliğ/konferans özetinin nasıl hazırlanacağı hususunda öğrencilerime ve ilgilenen dostlara yararlı olabilir diye burada yayımlıyorum.

----

ABSTRACT

THE DEBATES BETWEEN TURKISH NATIONALISTS and ISLAMISTS

Harun Anay, Ph.D.

The purpose of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of the debates between Turkish Nationalists and Islamists during the late period of Ottoman Empire and the early Republican period from 1908 until 1933.

Similar to the contemporary intellectual movements in the Islamic world, the ideas of the Turkish intellectuals have not been subjected to comparative study in the modern scholarship yet. It appears to me that especially the political, religious and social movements need to be studied comparatively. Only after a comparative analysis of these movements, can the sources, differences, similarities, influences and ideas they produced be understood accurately.

In my presentation, as a case study, I would like to examine the debates between Turkish nationalists and Islamists, which are the two main social, religious and intellectual movements in the contemporary Turkish intellectual thought.

Following the Second Constitutional period (II. Mesrutiyet) with the influence of the political developments, as an outcome of the Tanzimat and yeni osmanlilik, such main intellectual movements as nationalism (turkculuk, milliyetcilik or milletcilik), islamism (islamcilik) and westernism (garbcilik) or modernism (asrilik) gradually appeared in the last period of the Ottoman Empire. Among these movements nationalism and islamism have been considered as closer to each other than westernism.

Thus analyzing the debates between Turkish nationalists and islamists may display the similarities and differences between them, and could enable us to test the above hypothesis.

Of the variety of subjects discussed in these debates by intellectuals the following were among the major themes:

a-The union of the Ottomans, Turks and Muslims (ittihad-i Osmani, etrak and ittihad-i Islam);

b-The place of the nationalism in Islamic sources and tradition;

c-The idea of nation (millet) and nationalism (milliyetcilik or milletcilik);

d-Political, religious, ethical and social modernization of the Ottoman Empire and Islam (inkilab-i siyasi, dini, ahlaki and ictima’i);

e-The Islamic brotherhood and nationalism (uhuvvet-i Islami, uhuvvet-i dini and milliyetcilik);

f-The adoption (tatbik), imitation (taklid) or following (takib) of the western ideas.

g-Projects of the nationalists and islamists for the social, political, religious and intellectual life of the Ottomans, Turks and Muslims.

In studying the above topics, I surveyed Turk Yurdu, the main periodical of the nationalists, and Sirat-i Mustakim (later Sebilurresad), which is the main journal of the Islamists, and analyzed the published articles in these two periodicals between 1908-1930. In this regard I will discuss the ideas of the such thinkers of the contemporary Turkish intellectual history as Ziya Gokalp (d.1924), Suleyman Nazif (d.1927), Ahmed Agaoglu (d.1939), Seyhulislam Muza Kazım (d.1920), Babanzade Ahmed Naim (d.1934), Ali Kemal (d.1922), Yusuf Akcura (d.1935), Huseyin Kazım Kadri (d.1934).

At the end of my paper I would like to evaluate the debates, and to discuss whether the debates have continued or not after 1930s.

Harun Anay/09.12.2013

harunanay.blogspot.com

facebook.com/hasimharun.anay

facebook.com/HarunAnay

twitter.com/HarunAnay

linkedin.com/HarunAnay

academia.edu/HarunAnay

---